Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 268
world, stones did speak; that the very air sighed its voices in
his ear. It was the humans who were deaf to the language of
the Winds. Armiger, though he heard that language, did not
understand it. The sound of his own words was quickly
absorbed into the stone of the walls, the ancient tapestries, the
lacquered wood cabinets. And in all these things the Winds
resided.
Armiger knew they could listen if they chose; he
suspected they did not care what he said. The masters of
Ventus went on about their incomprehensible tasks, whispering
and muttering all around him.
He had spoken half for their benefit, but they ignored
him, as they had since he had arrived on Ventus. So, he
thought, his words dissolved into the stone, into the carpets,
into the wood. Save for the two women who stood with him,
none heard his brave boast.
Yet, though none in the palace heard, still his voice went
out. It penetrated the chambers and halls of the ancient
building, and passed through the sand and stone of the earth as
if they were an inch of air. In the high clouds from which the
raindrop-dwelling Precip Winds gazed down, Armiger’s voice
flickered as unread heat-lightning on a frequency they did not
attend. Even the Diadem swans, swirling in a millenial dance
among the van Allen belts, could have heard had they known to
listen.
No swan heard, nor any stone-devouring mountain Wind,
or any of the elemental and immortal spirits of the world. But
a solitary youth, lonely and sad by a lonely campfire mouthed
Armiger’s words, and sat up straight to listen.