Three Winds On Altai

"A Message in Secret."

Two Ice Folk approach the Shaman and Flandry. One carries an alcohol flame in a stone lamp. The other holds:

"...an intricately carved white staff..." (IX, p. 376)

- which seems to guide the flying aeromedusae.

"They came near, halted, and waited. Nothing moved but the low wind, ruffling their fur and streaming the flame." (ibid.)

Here, the movement of the wind emphasises the immobility of the Altaians. The Shaman knows that he too must stand quiet. Flandry, obliged to comply, grits his otherwise chattering teeth while disliking the uncanniness. When Krasna has set and the stars have appeared, the Shaman seems to take the descent of a meteor as a signal to begin speaking. This Shaman, called Juchi, really is the interpreter and negotiator between his species and another.

"Juchi gave an old man's sigh, like wind over the acrid waters." (p. 378)

They stand beside the acrid waters of "Tengri Nor, the Ghost Lake..." (IX, p. 373) Wind rippling the lake water provides an appropriate comparison for Juchi's sigh.

"An autumn gale blew down off the pole. It gathered snow on its way across the steppe, and struck Ulan Baligh near midnight." (X, p. 379)

The narrative role of this polar gale is to blow the "...horizontal white streaks..." (ibid.) of snow that help to conceal Flandry's night-time descent into the capital city.

Wind serves multiple purposes.