When I looked at them, really looked for the first time, I knew fully how much smaller I was grown. They had not changed, they still had all the stature of our people. I barely came to Shikrar's elbow.
I tried to bespeak Shikrar again, soulfriend for almost a thousand years, but even I could not hear my own truespeech. "Forgive me, Shikrar, Idai. The Language of Truth has deserted me for the moment," I said. They could not answer; they were robbed yet of speech by wonder.
I had to speak, if only to touch reality thus. Holding fast to Lanen—for balancing on two legs was proving most difficult—I faced them and tried to speak in the tongue of the Kantri, but my new mouth would not make the sounds. No truespeech, no Kantriasarikh? Was I to have nothing left of who I was?
I spoke again in the language of the Gedri. ''It is I, Shikrar. Truly," I said. "Do you know me for myself, my friend? Lady Idai, do you know me for Akor?" When they did not reply, I added, "I am glad you have tended to your own wounds, Shikrar. I thank you from my heart for bringing me here after the battle. I would have died there."
"Akhor did die there!" cried a high voice. We all three turned to look to Idai. Her eyes were wide and her Attitude spoke violent Denial. She was backing away from me, flapping her wings as if to take to the skies. "This is not Akhor! It cannot be. Akhor is dead!"
I opened my mouth to object, but in that moment I knew she spoke truth. I waited for the echo of her words to die to silence, then said gently, softly, trying to make my voice sound as normal as I could, ''Idai, Iderrisai, come, come, my friend, be calm, you are right. But for all that I am not to be feared. I am no wandering soul, no creation of the Rakshasa, though my bones—" I shivered. "—Akhor's bones—lie yonder. You are right. That name is a part of me, and all my life before I remember in the way of our Kindred, but I am made new, and I will need a new name."
"Name of the Winds," swore Shikrar softly, as Idai fought to control herself. He gazed full at me, and his Attitude swung bewilderingly between Fear, Denial, Friendship, Wonder and (I was amused to see) Protection of a Youngling. "I hear you and in your words and your voice I hear my soulfriend, but I cannot believe my ears or my eyes. Akhor, Akhorishaan, is it, can it be that you are trapped inside that body?"
"I am here, Hadreshikrar, but I am not trapped. Though the world is so huge!" I could bear it no longer, I laughed for heart's ease. "It is like being a youngling again, looking up at the trees and being so close to the ground! I am alive, Shikrar, beyond hope, and the ferrinshadik is silent at last! Behold these hands, so dextrous, so gentle, and this supple body!" I tried to bow in the fashion of the Gedri, and only Lanen's strong arm held me up. She laughed as she caught me, helped me to balance, delighting in me.
I reached out my hand, so soft, so useless in the eyes of the Kantri, and touched her cheek.
The tips of my fingers (though I did not know the word then) were sensitive beyond belief. I shivered again with the sensation, not only on my hands but all over this new vessel of mine.
Lanen's smooth skin beneath my hand was like nothing I had ever known.
Now it was my turn to swear. "Name of the Winds, Lanen! I feel every breath of air on these hands. How could you bear to burn yours so terribly, no matter whose life you might save?'' I wondered at my new body, for suddenly it was hard to speak past a thickening in my throat. "Dear one, oh, forgive me, I never knew it was such agony for you."
She smiled and took my hands in hers. "Akor, dear heart, I grew up on a farm. My hands were covered with calluses— places where the skin had grown hard. It happens naturally, for protection, and it helped a little at first. You'll get them, too, given time." She blinked, surprised at her own words, and laughed. I rejoiced when I recognised it as the laugh of delight I had heard when first she set foot on the island of the Kantri. "Your outer form may have changed," she said, "but I would know you for Akor in ten thousand. Who else is so full of questions?''
"At least now I do not have to contort my tongue to speak them. The sounds make sense with a mouth like this."
I am afraid that my first thought was that a lot of other things did, too, but I managed not to say anything. ''I notice you can say my name now." I grinned. "I miss that little hiss you added—but what's done is done."
With that I turned to face Idai, who was still standing well away from Akor. "That's a human saying, lady, that you would do well to listen to. This thing has happened whether we like it or not, and denying your old friend will not unmake it." I did not want to be harsh, but why should this all be so much harder for her to believe?
And with the thought itself came the answer. Lanen, Lanen, she has loved him for a thousand years, and now he is gone from her people forever. I spoke more gently, ashamed of my show of temper. "Lady Idai, your pardon, but this is the word of the Wind of Change, here as we stand. For good or ill the world will never be the same for any of us. At the least, let we who are at the heart of the change keep friends for the sake of one another."
"Step back, child of the Gedri," she said to me. Akor seemed steady enough on his feet now, so I stood away.
She leaned down until her head was at his level, her eyes locked on his. "I once told Akhor my name, when I was young and foolish and hoped that he might one day come to love me."
Her voice shook me—she was speaking in the same tones she had used the night before, calling to Akor in his Weh sleep. The voice of a mourning lover.
"Do you know my true name, youngling, and where and when I told it to Akhor? For only he and I in all the world know that."
For the first time sadness appeared on that face. "Idai, Idai, of course I know your name. But how should I speak it before Shikrar and Lanen? I would not so betray your trust. In eight hundred years I have never breathed it to any but you, and then only twice. I do not have truespeech, Lady. What would you?"
"Tell me," she said, and I sensed a kind of reckless madness rising in her. "Speak it aloud, Gedri. Shikrar is Keeper of Souls, he will know it in time.
And surely you will not hesitate to speak it before your dear one."
I bowed. "He might not, lady, but I will not put you in such peril." I bowed to her. "I was promised by my father to demons ere ever I was born. If they ever catch up with me—I was in the power of one for a brief moment, and I had no strength to resist. If I don't know your true name, I can't tell it."
I turned and walked away, as far on the other side of the clearing as I could get, and stuffed my fingers in my ears like a child.
Shikrar, I was glad to see, was also quietly moving away.
"Very well, Iderrikanterrisai," I said, as softly as I might, "you told me your true name at moonrise on Midwinter's night the year I was come to my prime, the year I had seen my full two centuries and a half." I could not keep old sternness out of my voice when I added, "You said you had waited for me to achieve my majority, that you longed for me, and that now you might speak of it without rebuke. When I protested that I did not know you well enough, that I was still young and had given no thought to a mate, you gave me your name. I do not know why, though I have wondered about it often enough. Perhaps you meant to shame me into giving mine."
I bowed my head, thinking (irrelevantly) as I did so that the gesture had not the power it had in my former body. "Several times since then, for your constant friendship, I would have given you my true name in return," I said sorrowfully, "but I never have, for I would not encourage you falsely nor build hope where there could be none."