Sabba dreamed, and the world ran hot and cold. One breath, and he was full through with flame, certain his fur would singe. The next, and his skin was ice, his body wracked with shivers that seemed to come from within, that rattled his knees and turned his speckled pelt dark and slick. He walked through it all, sometimes light and quick. Sometimes slow and staggering. His vision filled with curios vistas. At times he trod the narrow trench, high walls keeping him from the grassland, trapped in a shrinking world from which escape was impossible. Another time, he seemed to stand on the rim of the world. A great gash spread before him, as if the ground had been rent by a giant raptor’s claw, flayed open, its many ribbon layers laid bare and deep. The other voices guided him. A mare who was not his dam urging him onward. A foal who was not exactly his friend taunting him when he wanted to buckle and cease moving. It might have been hours or centuries that they led him, days or months that his fever raged, but when Sabba fully woke to himself again, he was in a dark place.

The air was cool and smelled of fresh water and other horses. The firm earth beneath him had been padded with dried grass. Sabba lay in the thick of it, and when his stomach rumbled, curled his neck absently and bit off a mouthful of the bedding. It was coarse and tasteless, but there was satisfaction in chewing, in breathing and living and knowing that he had not succumbed.

He would live, and of the mad illness which had so long fogged his mind there was no trace.

The colt flared his nostrils, stretched his upper lip high, and scented his surroundings. He shifted, and a voice answered from the darkness.

"What was that?"

Sabba recognized it as belonging to the other colt, to Dabon. He remembered enough of that one to play a trick.

"The monster behind you," he answered.

His ears perked in delight when the other colt whimpered and cried, "Mother?"

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"There are no monsters here." The mare's voice chided, but gently. "And I believe our young guest is feeling better.?"

"Yes," Sabba said. Then, because guilt had finally caught him, "Sorry."

From the sound of their voices and the soft shuffling noises Saba guessed they were both near, close enough that he should have been able to see them easily.

"Why is it so dark?" he asked around a spike of worry. Had his illness taken his vision with it?

"It is night." There was no trace of concern in the mare's voice, yet Sabba had slept many nights on the plain with his own dam, and even at the heart of midnight, the sky glowed with stars, and a horse's eyes could see shadowed shapes of grass and brush, the silhouette of his dam nearby.

"Where are the stars?" he asked.

"He's not very smart," Dabon whispered clearly enough to be heard.

Sabba's ears flattened, and he lifted his lip again, baring teeth that no one could see in this black, starless place.

"Hush, Dabon," the mare said sharply. The dry bedding crunched as if a hoof had stamped against it. "We're not outside," she told Sabba. "We're here in the cleft, not far from the Nurani kinfe."

Most of what she said made no sense to the colt, but he knew that last word, knew that kinfe meant safety, meant home and reunion with the rest of his band. His mother had taught him as much before...

HIs mind shied from the end of that thought. He had survived. His future lay before him now, somewhere in the darkness of a new kinfe. He might be a colt, fresh and alone in the world, but he was also a Wind Singer.

Without meaning to, Sabba let loose with as large a song as any foal could muster. His voice, which was small and weak, seemed to grow louder, to fold back upon itself, amplified again and again. The sound went on long after he'd closed his muzzle, and he braced himself for a correction, apology at the ready.

Instead, he heard the other colt squeal gleefully. "That's more like it," Dabon said, and sang out on his own, rumbling and squealing a song that echoed away from them. Sabba answered it. To his surprise so did the mare.

Then, another voice, a distant trumpet, called back to them. Before it died another followed, and another. The darkness filled with many horses singing, near and far the Wind Singers called and answered. Their voices melded, proud and glorious.

And Sabba closed his eyes, lay his head against the dry bedding, and listened with his whole heart.