Awondo stirs, looking upward, brow sweating, chest tightening, eyes worried. He still doubts. His dreams of his wife are strong, so strong she moves and breathes as a living being within his thoughts, so that he cannot do a single thing without first consulting with her visage.

He lays there doubting me, but unable to leave. The power my father loaned to him is too intoxicating. He cannot resist its pull. He cannot resist its promise. He can do nothing with it on his own, and so, he cannot resist me. For, who else will teach him? Phosphora? She favors her beastling worshipers and stunted rock warriors. Yuluru? She worries over plants and trees. No, it had to be her, Kari, the Maiden of Fire. No, the Mother of Fire.

There it is, the thing she could not abide. To be born a woman, but barren and unable to beget a child. Fire would be her child. She would raise a Mortal man to Might and together they would birth a living flame. Awondo, somehow she knew for years, is that man, and here he is, absorbing her father's gift as if it were made specifically for him? Perhaps it was? He does love Awondo, and Kari would not have noticed the man if not for her father's high esteem for him. He often spoke of him to her, before his wretched dream of Sulphina's death. It's no wonder she left the palace and hid. He set such a guard on her, and she has no home outside Avon Lasair, save Selenne's tower. But Sulphina doesn't care much for Mennechandra, or her cousins there, even if she's close to her mother. Yet another reason to hate the brat. She has a mother.

Awondo stands, ready to please the daughter of his king. Kari smiles. Soon, he will yearn to please me. By whatever means, she will receive him. She is keeping a piece of the gift for herself, in case they do encounter the dark bringer. She will make better use of the gift, as she is Mighty. But she needs to cling to it tightly. She thought her heart a hermetic oubliette where power resides becalmed until bidden. She learns as the gift burns that it craves freedom, or to be united with the larger portion that is roiling within Awondo, making him sweat and giving him license to rebellion.

"I will not train today," he says with his pursed lips. "I will go to Windaji," he adds with his sad eyes.

Kari smiles. "It's a very long walk from here."

He looks upward.

"No," warns Kari, "you do not have that skill yet. That gift must be earned."

She regards him coolly. He has a voice. Somehow, this plain, non ascendant corporeal being has a voice. But he does not know. Do I waken it? I want to. I wanted to the moment I first saw him brandishing his spear on his pyramid city. She wondered then how a Mortal man could hold such monopoly over her father's favor, and sensed a greatness in him that others of his kindred lacked. She looks at him angry, envious, desirous, curious. She kindles a spear of Sunlight in the air between them, sends it, sees him begrudgingly change form into the bronze jaguar. She pulls it back, disperses it, sees him turn back into blood and bone. How deftly he wields her father's gift. She wonders if he would always be in the form of the cat if he had the full share, the piece she holds for herself, the piece that sings. She wonders if he could become the true warrior of Sunlight Avon Lasair needs him to be. Heat and fire and blinding light, the power to give life or lay waste to worlds. Can Awondo survive such a kindling?

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A thought shines in her mind, twinkling and mischievous, curious. Can he hold the sword? She had to wrap it in her father's coronation robe to keep her own hands from freezing off. She summons the robe and it lifts from the dugout they hallowed, each with their own flame. Foe is wrapped within. Awondo turns again to bronze, but she changes her mind and the sword is set back down.

I wish to make him my prince, not my pawn.

She wants to see him ignite, not flicker. A thought shines in her mind, at first a flame, then a tear. She rises off the ground and burns, then turns and moves with speed to the hills to the north, where the old man waits in the spaces between. Thrond communed with the wretched old man, First of the Fiends.

She keeps a pace that he can follow, above the ground and riding the low breeze, swift but not so swift as her, yet riding in her wake all the same. For a day and three more they move, until they see their prey. The hills of the Grey are shrouded as ever, the old man's golems watchful. Mounds of clay stand vigil at the roots of the hills, fog cloaked standing stones their crowns. Where the treacherous old man is, Kari does not care to learn. She floats past the mounds at the toes of the nearest hill; Ghuli, it's named. She rises high, brandishing a flaming sword and whip, and screams a taunt of lost family. Wind answers her, wind and the distant clattering of bones. Whispers of nothing float through the fog, and she looks about, waiting. For a time she is still. Awondo comes to her, asking what they are waiting for. She knows his words, yes, but wishes he would sing. She risks her life for the sake of his love, and starts to say the name of the old man in the hills.

The White Raven swoops down with a fearful caw, bone wings a clatter, spread thirty three feet wide. He snaps with his beak and cuts her whip, swipes her with a skeletal talon. She goes coal dark for an instant after a flash of white glow, and rolls down the hill leaving a trail of cinders that the hill swallows with fingers of soiled bone. She swipes upward with her sword, scorching the raven's ribs as it swoops down again, this time lifting her. She feels her chest being crushed in its talons, then sees a golden light streaking from above. Awondo has risen, and in bronze he bears down on the beastly bird. Yellow flame lights the grey sky, and the Jaguar King attacks. His spear strikes the White Raven on the head, the armpit, the beak, the claw, pinions of bone, beak again. No damage is done, and the bird laughs. The Jaguar growls, then stabs his spear into the ground and his hands raise above his head. Between them is a small red light the size of a grain of sand. Bright it burns, until the sky and hills turn red, and the bird drops kari and flees. She finds herself in Awondo's arms, and his bronze eyes are worried as he runs like lightning from the hills.