‘So you have said before,’ snapped Ilm Absinos. ‘And still, for all your chewing the same words, there remains no proof.’
‘We do not know,’ sighed Ulag, ‘who has summoned us. It is curious, but we are closed to her, or him. As if a wall of power stands between us, one that can only be breached from the other side. The summoner must choose. Until such time, we must simply wait.’
Kalt Urmanal spoke for the first time. ‘None of you understand anything. The waters are… crowded.’
To this, silence was the only reply.
Kalt snarled, as if impatient with them all. He was still kneeling and it seemed he had little interest in moving. Instead, he pointed. ‘There. Another approaches.’
Rystalle and the others turned.
The sudden disquiet was almost palpable.
She wore the yellow and white fur of the brold, the bear of the snows and ice. Her hair was black as pitch, her face wide and flat, the skin stained deep amber. The pits of her eyes were angled, tilted at the outer corners. The talons of some small creature had been threaded through her cheeks.
T’lan Imass, yes. But… not of our clans.
Three barbed harpoons were strapped to her back. The mace she carried in one hand was fashioned of some animal’s thighbone, inset with jagged blades of green rhyolite and white chert.
She halted fifteen paces away.
Ilm Absinos gestured with her staff. ‘You are a bonecaster, but I do not know you. How can this be? Our minds were joined at the Ritual. Our blood wove a thousand-upon-a-thousand threads. The Ritual claims you as kin, as T’lan Imass. What is your clan?’
‘I am Nom Kala-’
Brolos Haran cut in, ‘We do not know those words.’
That very admission was a shock to the Orshayn. It was, in fact, impossible. Our language is as dead as we are.
Nom Kala cocked her head, and then said, ‘You speak the Old Tongue, the secret language of the bonecasters. I am of the Brold T’lan Imass-’
‘There is no clan chief who claimed the name of the brold!’
She seemed to study Brolos for a moment, and then said, ‘There was no clan chief bearing the name of the brold. There was, indeed, no clan chief at all. Our people were ruled by the bonecasters. The Brold clans surrendered the Dark War. We Gathered. There was a Ritual-’
‘What!’ Ilm Absinos lurched forward, almost stumbling until her staff brought her up short. ‘ Another Ritual of Tellann? ’
‘We failed. We were camped beneath a wall of ice, a wall that reached to the very heavens. We were assailed-’
‘By the Jaghut?’ Brolos asked.
‘No-’
‘The K’Chain Che’Malle?’
Once more she cocked her head and was silent.
The wind moaned.
A grey fox wandered into their midst, stepping cautiously, nose testing the air. After a moment, it trotted down to the water’s edge. Pink tongue unfurled and the sounds of lapping water tickled the air.
Watching the fox, Kalt Urmanal put his hands to his face, covering his eyes. Seeing this, Rystalle turned away.
Nom Kala said, ‘No. The dominion of both was long past.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘It was held among many of us that the enemy assailing our people were humans-our inheritors, our rivals in the ways of living. We bonecasters-the three of us who remained-knew that to be no more than a half-truth. No, we were assailed by ourselves. By the lies we told each other, by the false comforts of our legends, our stories, our very beliefs.’
‘Why, then,’ asked Ulag, ‘did you attempt the Ritual of Tellann?’
‘With but three bonecasters left, how could you have hoped to succeed?’ Ilm Absinos demanded, her voice brittle with outrage.
Nom Kala fixed her attention upon Ulag. ‘Trell-blood, you are welcome to my eyes. To answer your question: it is said that no memory survives the Ritual. We deemed this just. It is said, as well, that the Ritual delivers the curse of immortality. We saw this, too, as just.’
‘Then against whom did you wage war?’
‘No one. We were done with fighting, Trell-blood.’
‘Then why not simply choose death?’
‘We severed all allegiance to the spirits-we had been lying to them for too long.’
The fox lifted its head, eyes suddenly wide, ears pricked. It then trotted in its light-footed way along the rim of the pool. Slipped beneath some firebrush, and vanished inside a den.
How much time passed before another word was spoken? Rystalle could not be certain, but the fox reappeared, a marmot in its jaws, and bounded away, passing so close to Rystalle that she could have brushed its back with her hand. A flock of tiny birds descended to prance along the muddy verge. Somewhere in the shallows ruddered a carp.
