She leaned back, staring up at the firelight as it danced across the smooth curve of the sea-washed stone. The wind blew through the cave, whistling over the rock like it was laughing at her. Then, out of nowhere, a voice whispered, “Miranda?”
Miranda leaped to her feet with her hands out, ready, but the cave was empty. Only the fire moved, the little flames clinging for life in the high wind. She pressed her back against the wall. A trick of the wind? Spirits sometimes mumbled as they went, especially winds, who seldom slept. Yet the voice had been clear, and it had certainly said her name.
She was turning this over frantically in her head, trying to keep a watch on everything at once, when her eyes caught something strange. At the mouth of the cave, silhouetted by the strip of sunlight, a figure landed.
Miranda blinked rapidly, but it didn’t change what she saw. With the light at their back, she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but it was certainly human, even though she’d just seen it do something a human shouldn’t be able to do. Whatever it was had not walked up or climbed down—it had landed in front of her cave. Landed neatly, as though it had hopped down off a step, but that made no sense at all. The cliff was nearly a hundred feet tall.
Even as she was trying to sort this out, the figure ducked under the cave’s low entrance and walked forward with quick, sprightly steps. Miranda pressed her back to the wall and sent a tremor of power down to her rings only to find that they were already awake and ready, glimmering suspiciously. As the figure stepped into the circle of the firelight, Miranda saw that it was a man. She placed him at late middle age, maybe older, with gray hair and skin that was starting to droop. He had an intelligent, wrinkled face and large spectacles, which gave him the air of a kindly scholar. This effect was aided by the long, shapeless robe he wore wrapped several times around his bony shoulders so that he looked like someone who’d lost a fight with a bed sheet. Other than the robe and the spectacles, he wore no other clothes she could see. Even his feet were bare, and he took care to walk only on the sand, stepping around the washed-up patches of sharp, broken shells.
Miranda didn’t move an inch as he approached. Nothing about him was threatening, yet here was a stranger who’d appeared from nowhere, and she was a wanted fugitive. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she felt almost silly for thinking it. Anyone could have seen that the man wasn’t from the Spirit Court. If the lack of rings wasn’t proof enough, the fact that he just walked up to a Spiritualist, who had all her spirits buzzing, without a trace of caution completely tossed out all suspicion of Spirit Court involvement. That left the question, what was he?
As he approached, the wind continued to roar, drowning out all other sounds. It blew the sand in waves and whipped the man’s robes around him, though, miraculously, they never tangled in his arms or impeded his legs. When he reached Miranda’s fire, the man sat down gracefully, like a guest at a banquet, and gestured with his hand.
The moment he moved his fingers, the wind died out, and in the sudden silence, he extended his hand to Miranda.
“Please,” he said, smiling. “Sit.”
Miranda didn’t budge. It took a strong-willed wizard to work with a wind, and she wasn’t about to give him an opening just because he was polite. “Who are you?”
“Someone who wants to help you, Spiritualist Lyonette,” the man said pleasantly.
“If you know that much,” Miranda said, relaxing a fraction, “then you should know it’s just Miranda now. My title was stripped last week.”
“So I have been told,” the man said. “But such things matter very little to the powers I represent.” He motioned again. “Please, do sit.”
Curiosity was eating at her now, and she inched her way down the wall until she was sitting, facing him across the fire.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, taking off his spectacles and cleaning them on his robe. “I have been rude. My name is Lelbon. I serve as an ambassador for Illir.”
He paused, waiting for some kind of reaction, but the name meant nothing to Miranda. However, the moment Lelbon spoke, she felt a sharp, stabbing pressure against her collarbone. At first, she thought the man had done something, but then she realized it was Eril’s pendant driving itself into her chest.
Careful to keep her face casual, she sent a small questioning tendril of power down to her wind spirit. The answer she received was an overwhelming, desperate need to come out.
“Eril,” she said softly, pulling on the thread that connected them, giving permission. The pendant’s pressure stopped and the wind spirit flew out. For once, however, Eril did not rush around. Instead, he swirled obediently beside Miranda, creating little circles in the sand.