Mor had not seen this vessel messenger before. That made her nervous, no matter how often she told herself it did not matter. It was not him she would be speaking to about the important matters. He was but the vessel, and of course vessels were interchangeable. Only the contents within mattered. But still, she had first to look into a stranger's eyes and search for a loved one. This was not something she had ever grown accustomed to.
They sat across from each other on a hillock in the barren stretch between two walls. Once, the area had been a park, but that was long ago. Now it was abandoned and overgrown with briars, home to rats and other scurrying things. They were alone save for the few guards who stood at a distance, on the lookout for the unlikely patrol of the divine children. They had planned the meeting to avoid this.
"Hello, Mor Avenger," the man said. "It honors me to meet you, as it honors me to carry an elder within and his message from the Free People." He bowed his head as he spoke, showing her the short bristle of a few weeks' hair growth across his crown, the skin visible beneath it and dotted with the heart-shaped imprints of the sky bear. Unusual, for the Fru Nithexek was not a numerous clan.
Mor answered him formally. "The honor is mine. May this vessel never crack."
The man looked up. His wide-spaced eyes were large, brown, and intense. He smiled. "I have not cracked yet, Mor Avenger. I won't today. You can rest assured of that. Before I begin, tell me, is it true? Do we hold a prince of the Akarans?"
Mor nodded.
"Could he be the Rhuin Fa?"
"Anything could be," she answered, feeling suddenly testy in addition to uneasy. It was inappropriate for him to waste time feeding his own curiosity. "Whether he is or not isn't for me to say."
Pursing his lips, the messenger said, "Nor for me to ask, judging by your tone. Forgive me. For us in the Westlands, though, we are hungry for hope. We hear rumors, but we've heard rumors for hundreds of years. Nothing yet has come of them."
"I didn't take you as that old."
The man smiled again. "You are anxious to begin. I understand. Shall we?"
Despite her impatience, Mor scanned the overgrown walls before answering. She made eye contact with Tunnel, who stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the arch through which they would exit. He acknowledged her with a lift of his chin. Like everything about him, it was a gruff gesture, but it was comforting as well.
"Yes," she said, "do begin."
The messenger cleared his throat. His gaze flicked to Mor, amused just a moment longer, and then his arms went limp in his lap and he seemed to focus his entire consciousness on his breathing. Eyes closed, he inhaled and exhaled. Every so often he let out a low moan. For a time his head dropped forward as if he were asleep. And then it seemed he really was asleep, his moaning nothing but faint snoring. That was how it always was. Mor waited, watching him, curious, as ever, about what was about to happen.
Then, the moaning ceased. The man's breathing stopped. For an uncomfortably long few moments it was as if the sleeping man had passed into death. And then he looked up. He gasped and blinked his eyes open. His now blue eyes-the whites veined with a crimson lacework of age, yellowed and tired-were not the messenger's eyes anymore. Nor was his voice the same.
"Dearest," his mouth said. The voice coming out did not fit the shape or the movement of his lips. A dry voice, slow and patient and heavy with melancholy and love, it was a voice she knew well from her girlhood but had not heard from the actual man in some years. "You are not my little girl, are you?"
Her first impulse was to refute that. Yes! Yes, she was his little girl. Of course she was. That's all she ever would be. It was cruel for him to say otherwise. But she had said that on other occasions, and it did no good. Instead, she swallowed and said, "No, but I am the one who was that little girl. Now I am the woman who remembers that girl and remembers you. Hello, Yoen."
The messenger smiled. His eyes closed for a moment. Opened. Yoen's voice said, "Hello, dearest. I wish my eyes could truly see you, at least once more before I fly. That would do my heart good."
"Let it be so. Let us make it so." A tear welled from Mor's left eye and raced down her cheek. She had not known there was a danger of this. She wiped at it, embarrassed, flooded with memories she rarely allowed to surface. Yoen, the nearest thing to a father she had ever known-more than that, he was father and mother both, and a balm for the loss of a brother. Life was cruel and cruel again, to take everything from her as a child and make her relearn herself under this man's care. And then, later, to ask her to be whole unto herself when he escaped to join the elders in the Westlands, on the Sky Isle. It was too much to bear.
The thing was, she knew that the eyes looking at her, though they appeared to be Yoen's, were not his. They were the messenger's, and it was he who was seeing enough to be able to take part in this conversation. Yoen himself did not see her. He had instilled himself and his words inside this man at least a fortnight ago. They had lived in him, and now the vessel let them out. More than that, he shaped them. He spoke and reacted with Yoen's voice and mind, even though Yoen himself was not part of it. Mor had never understood the process. And she had never liked it.
"What do the elders wish of me?" Mor asked.
"Tell me of the Akaran."
She could tell him things, but whatever responses he made to what she said had to have been embedded in the vessel weeks ago. It made little sense, but few of the things the People had learned from the Lothan Aklun did. She answered as fully as she could, telling Yoen everything that seemed important. She did leave out how she had reacted during her first encounter with Dariel, but that was a detail, not the substance he needed.
"Do you believe he speaks truly?"
With more bitterness than she intended, Mor said, "I don't know what truth means to Acacians."
Yoen's eyes stared at her. Waited.
"He seems to believe himself. He is earnest, but that doesn't mean he's truthful. He may just be foolish."
"We must be careful with him," Yoen's voice said, after considering this for a long moment. "If he is the living prophecy, he must be allowed to find it himself. We cannot thrust it upon him. We can, however, take certain steps. This is what you will do: test him further. Find a true test."
Mor's eyes widened. A true test meant a task to be accomplished in the real world, with real danger. "And if he dies?"
"Then he is not the Rhuin Fa. Mor, my dearest, go with the-"
"Wait," Mor interrupted what she knew to be the beginning of a farewell. "Yoen, how do we know that we don't err by forcing a role upon him? You yourself once told me that the prophecy of the Rhuin Fa might be nothing more than a tale to keep our hopes alive. Perhaps we are giving this Akaran an importance he shouldn't have, putting our faith in someone who may not deserve it."
Though he only had his eyes to express emotion, Mor was sure she could see the look of fatigued love Yoen had so often showered upon her. "Dearest, how do you know that's not how prophecy works?"
That question was still circling through Mor's mind half an hour later, after she had parted with Yoen, bade the vessel farewell, and worked her way back down under Avina. Tunnel led the way. Dariel's cell was changed so often, and she was so distracted with managing the People's myriad concerns, that it was comforting having Tunnel's broad gray back to follow. They arrived at Dariel's new room before she knew it. Tunnel turned and studied her, concern on his face. She had hardly said a word to him as they walked. She realized he had no idea what Yoen had said to her. Considering his obvious affection for Dariel, it was insensitive to hold to her silence.