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Beacon Light forward past the waiting city folk.

'Lord, you have saved us!' the people cried out as the King walked to the head of the column.

Angis fell into step with him, casting her warm shawl across his shoulders. 'You have saved us all, my Lord, even the weak and the humble, and they thank you. Listen to the praise in their voices.'

Holbian laughed, rubbing his hand through Beacon Light's wet mane. 'That is the real task set before Kings, to care for all their people. Power and pomp are nothing but empty moments; rising towers and palaces are empty sh.e.l.ls; the greatness of Elundium walks with me here in the dark.'

Angis nodded and made to drop back into her place.

'Walk with me,' Holbian called, 'and listen to the music in the coat, for it tells of where the darkness ends and the new daylight begins.'

'Lord, wherever you walk there will be sunlight, for you are a King who loves his people,' she answered.

'If only I had discovered all this an age ago there would be no Nightbeasts,' King Holbian sighed.

236.

The First Shout of Silence

Thane murmured in his sleep and curled himself into a tight ball against the cold, snuggling into Ousious' side under the torn cloak. Ogion sat sentry-still nearby, staring out across the blizzard-covered beach, past the sleeping forms of the flock of swans, at the dark lake beyond. The ice had begun to groan and crack yet there was no change in the weather.

Rising up, he waddled up the beach and fuelled the dying fire, tossing broken beach wreckage on to the glowing embers.

Thane opened his eyes, sat up and smiled at the Lord of Swans. He stretched out his arms and stared at the bright cotton thread sewn neatly across his wrist. Blinking he frowned and remembered slashing his wrist to try to save Ousious' life, but how did the coloured thread become sewn across his wrist? Turning he felt under the half cloak at the stiff blood-encrusted wound on Ousious' chest. She was warm to his touch and her breast rose and fell with each sleeping breath she took. Thane touched the rough st.i.tches he had sewn with strands from Stumble's mane and looked up to the top of the beach where the horse grazed, hunched against the weather.

'The Queen of Swans lives!' he shouted, before falling back exhausted. Thane shivered beneath the cloak and closed his eyes, too tired to worry about the rainbow thread, but the creaking voice of the ice that lay thick across Swanwater made him sit up again, 'Why does the ice move?' he asked, staring

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out across the lake. 'Perhaps something unnatural is draining the water,' he thought. He watched the buckling ice water shatter under its own weight and collapse into the freezing mud out in the centre of the lake.

'A great power is emptying the lake,' he said, turning his wrist over and gazing at the coloured thread. 'Something as great as the hand chat sewed up my wrist! Perhaps Nevian, the Master of Magic!' Thane whispered, touching the thread and feeling the warmth of a summer day flow through his numb fingers. 'Perhaps he came and found me stranded on this beach, weak from the loss of blood.'

Thane rose slowly to his feet, using a twisted waterbleached branch to keep him steady. Dizzily he took one step towards the shattered ice and sank to his knees.

Ogion hissed and flapped his wings, pushing him back towards Ousious. 'Rest and become strong, you cannot follow Krulshards until Ousious is strong enough to fly, for only she knows the way.'

Thane turned back the corner of the cloak and gendy stroked the soft downy feathers on Ousious' neck. 'Please tell me, Queen of Swans, which way the Nightmare took Elionbel.'

Ousious stirred, moved her wings and straightened her neck. Opening and- closing her bright orange beak she

brushed it against Thane's cheek.

'Where did the Nightmare run?' Thane asked, pressing his .

ear against her breast. Far away beyond the edge of the wind I he could hear the whisper of her heart and faint murmurs of

the dark road through Meremire Forest.

Then Ogion pulled him away. 'Leave Ousious to rest, she is weak and burdened with our fate. It was foretold long ago when night first spread across Elundium chat the Queen of Swans would lead us into silence. We did not know how dais silence would begin, only chat it heralds the Nightmare's end, or so the legend tells, for we are the grey swans of his dooms That is why we called his name each time we flew across.

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Elundium, searching without finding, looking without seeing, for we feared the silence.'

'But the aged crones say you carry everyone's death in your voices; that is why the people fear you.'

'Men are fools who seek Themselves in every shadow. If they had listened to our voices they would have heard the Nightmare's name.'

'But you resisted chasing the Nightmare when Nevian asked you to show me his footprints!' Thane cried.

'Knowing your fate and meeting it are very different things.

Knowing that somehow your loved one will be struck mute is not an easy path to follow.'

Thane looked across at the sleeping Queen and whispered, 'Was it Krulshard's black spear blade that struck her mute or did I damage Ousious as I removed the broken splinter?'

Ogion shook his head. 'Fate drew us together, Thane, and your skill and courage saved Ousious' life, for without your blood she would have died. Each daylight as our slender necks intertwine we will echo our love together, for with the rising of the winter sun all our voices shall fall silent with that of our Queen.'

'But how shall I find the Nightmare if you do not tell me the way? Stumble cannot keep pace with you, we have

followed your voice Through all the wildlands.'

Ogion searched the night shadows, turning his head from left to right. 'Ousious will show you the way when she is strong enough to fly. Fear not what tomorrow may bring, be patient until then.'

Thane put his head into his hands and wept, cursing Krulshards for striking Ousious mute, and covered by despair,

he was blind to the black night pa.s.sing through the grey hours into a cold winter's dawn where the first rays of the winter sun shone dully on Swanwater, melting the thick layer of ice that lay across the mud. Thane searched the beach, sifting the pebbles between his fingers.

'Where is the Nightmare's splinter of broken steel? Show

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me where it fell so that I can destroy it in the fire,' he asked Ogion.

Ogion looked up to the winter sun and opened and closed his beak noiselessly then ran out across the ice, flapping his wings.

'Your silence has started, and the cause of it is lost in the mud of the lake. Well, it is as safe there as it is in the fire!'

Turning, he knelt beside Ousious and inspected the ugly wound, testing the strength of the horsehair st.i.tches. All around him the flock of swans was moving along the beach searching for food or laying fine down feather nests in shaded dips or clumps of grey reeds that rattled in the chill morning wind.

Ogion brought sc.r.a.ps of half-chewed fish and gra.s.s for '

Thane and Ousious to eat. Stumble trotted down off the