“You should rejoice,” Dahrena told the Lonak. “Now you have the greatest story to tell when you go home.”
“Alturk never shares at the fire,” Kiral said. “Though my sister once told me he has a story to shame all others. For Alturk, as confirmed by the Mahlessa herself, once heard the voice of a god.”
Alturk slammed his hand on the table, grating something in his own language and glowering fiercely at Kiral. Vaelin made ready to rise in her defence but the huntress just smiled, meeting his gaze with a complete absence of fear and saying something in Lonak which she quickly translated for Vaelin and Dahrena: “A story not shared is a waste of riches.”
Food was brought in shortly after, wooden platters piled with roasted meat, also bowls of nuts and berries. “Tastes like seal,” Alturk observed, taking a large bite of meat. “Though not so tough.”
“Walrus,” Astorek explained, coming to sit down at their table. “Winter meat. We eat mostly elk in the summer.” He gave Alturk and Kiral a curious glance, his gaze switching between them and Vaelin. “You are not from the same tribe.”
“No,” Alturk confirmed in an emphatic growl, chewing and swallowing. “We are Lonakhim. They”—he jerked his head at Dahrena and Vaelin—“are Merim Her.”
“We were enemies for a long time,” Vaelin said. “Now we are allies, made so by your people.”
Astorek gave a sigh of annoyance but this time refused to display any offence. “These are my people.”
“How do you come to speak our language?” Dahrena asked.
Astorek glanced at Whale Killer, now engaged in animated conversation with Wise Bear. “A tale to be told soon enough.”
The meal lasted into the night, the copious meat supplemented by a heady brew that smelt strongly of pine. Vaelin took only a sip before setting it aside although Alturk seemed to appreciate it. “Like drinking a tree,” he said, voicing a rare laugh as he drained his bowl.
“We ferment wild berries and pine-cones,” Astorek said. “Let it sit long enough and you can use it to light fires.”
“Lights a fire in my belly, true enough.” Alturk lifted another bowl to his lips, drinking it down in a few gulps. As the evening wore on Vaelin was relieved to find the hulking Lonak a morose drunk rather than a fighting one, watching him slump forward, head rested on his hand as he continued to down the pine ale, muttering to himself in his own language, much to Kiral’s evident disgust.
“You shame the Mahlessa Sentar with this display,” she sniffed.
Alturk curled his lip and said a few short words in Lonak. From Kiral’s furious reaction Vaelin judged they were not complimentary. She snarled a curse in Lonak, getting to her feet, her knife half-drawn.
“Enough!” Vaelin told her, voice heavy with command and loud enough to herald a sudden silence in the hall. “This is not your home and you insult our hosts,” he went on in a quieter tone, his gaze shifting to Alturk. “And you, Tahlessa, should go and sleep it off.”
“Merim Her,” Alturk slurred, half rising, fumbling for his war club and promptly dropping it. “Son killer!” He braced his arms on the table and tried to lever himself up. However, the task seemed to be beyond his diminished limbs and he collapsed, his face connecting with the table with a painful thump. He remained in the same position and soon began to snore.
“Varnish,” Kiral sneered, sitting down again and glaring at Vaelin. “You should have let me kill him. My song finds little of worth in him.”
“A troubled mind deserves healing, not death,” Astorek told her, casting a sympathetic gaze over the slumbering Lonak. “And those of the same tribe should not kill each other.”
Kiral laughed, popping a berry into her mouth. “Then, since we’re no longer allowed to kill the Merim Her, the Lonak would have little else to do.”
Astorek gave a sorrowful shake of his head. “All so strange, but so familiar.”
The feast came to an end some hours later, the Sentar carrying the still-unconscious Alturk to the far end of the hall where Astorek told them they were welcome to make their beds, the settlement lacking any empty dwellings to house so many newcomers. “The tribe grows larger by the year,” he said. “We are required to build constantly.”
Whale Killer and Many Wings appeared at his side along with Wise Bear, the shamaness pointing her staff towards the hall’s broad doorway. “It is time for our tale,” Astorek said.
After the warmth of the hall the cold outside felt crushing, stealing the air from Vaelin’s lungs and provoking an instant thumping in his temples. Dahrena and Kiral accompanied him as they followed the ice folk into the forest, Astorek leading the way with a flaming torch. The path was steep and thick with snow, the way ever more difficult the higher they climbed though the Wolf People moved with the unconscious speed born of having walked this trail many times.
Finally they came to a flat expanse at the base of a rugged cliff, Astorek lifting his torch so the light played over a narrow opening in the rock face. Vaelin saw how Kiral and Dahrena stiffened at the sight of the cave, and how Wise Bear took a firmer hold on his bone-staff. “Power?” he asked him.
“Much power,” the shaman confirmed, peering into the cave with obvious unease. “Maybe too much.”
“There is no danger for you here,” Astorek said, moving into the cave and beckoning Vaelin to follow. “This place is as much yours as ours.”
The cave entrance was narrow but opened out into a broad cavern, the walls dry and the air musty with age. Numerous bowl-like indentations had been carved into the cavern floor, each stained with dried pigment of different hues, but it was the walls that captured Vaelin’s attention. The cavern curved around them in a long semicircle, two-thirds of its length richly adorned in paintings, the colours so vibrant they seemed to shimmer in the light from Astorek’s torch.
Many Wings spoke, ushering Vaelin towards the stretch of wall nearest the cave mouth. “Mother bids you welcome to the memory of the Wolf People,” Astorek said.
Vaelin peered at the images painted onto the stone and was surprised to find the paint fresh, the images clear and easily discerned, a large patch of black paint adorned with small pinpricks of yellow he took to symbolise the night sky. A little farther along he found an image of crude stick figures, all arranged into a single large group, and next to them the same group divided by three black lines.
“The end of the first Long Night,” Astorek said, “and the birth of the three tribes, dividing the islands between them. There were no shamans then, and life was hard. But still we prospered.” He moved along, the torch flickering over various scenes, the images becoming less crude as they progressed, so that soon there were no more stick figures, but clear depictions of people and beasts. Hunters speared walrus on the ice or cast harpoons at whales from the prow of boats, others raised dwellings among the trees. Vaelin paused at the next image, taking a moment to fully understand the scene; an island, Wolf Home judging by the shape of the mountain, and alongside it a vessel of some kind, but of completely unfamiliar design. It was long and low in the water with only a single mast and far more oars than any modern ship.
“They came from the west in the summer months,” Astorek said. “So many years ago the stars have changed their course since. A tall people speaking in meaningless babble but bringing gifts of great value, blades of iron stronger and sharper than any we could smelt, and wondrous devices of glass to cast sight over great distances. We called them the Great Boat People.”
He pointed to three figures depicted next to the ship, two men and a woman. The woman was of arresting beauty, dark-haired with green eyes, wearing a long white robe and a golden amulet around her neck: a half-moon adorned with a red stone. The man on her left wore a blue robe and was slight of build, his face handsome but narrow and seemed to be wearing a half smile on his lips. But it was the man on the woman’s right who captured Vaelin’s attention, an impressive figure, bearded, tall and broad across the shoulders, his brow furrowed as if lost in the depth of t
hought, the face near identical to one Vaelin had seen before.
“It’s him!” he said, turning to Wise Bear, his heart thumping in excitement. “The statue from the Fallen City! You see it?”
Wise Bear nodded, his expression markedly less enthusiastic. “Story known to Bear People,” he said. “Great Boat People brought death to the ice.”
“Yes.” Astorek moved on, his torch revealing a scene of devastation, a settlement like the one they had just left, but littered with corpses. “They came peacefully, seeking to trade treasures for knowledge. They had no warriors, offered no violence, but still they brought death. A great sickness that laid waste to every settlement they visited until the three tribes were but a remnant.”
The torchlight revealed the woman again, standing alone this time, her face shown in profile, lowered and drawn in great sadness. Her hands were held to her face, red with blood from finger to wrist. “It was the woman who saved us,” Astorek said. “How is not fully understood, but she gave her blood and it saved us, the sickness faded. But…” He illuminated the next image, the two men standing over the woman’s body. The handsome man’s smile had gone, his face now hard with anger, whilst the bearded man wore an expression of stoic forbearance, though whatever ancient hand had captured his face had clearly seen the grief he was trying to hide.
“The tall man took his great boat and sailed away,” Astorek said. “But the other man stayed, unwilling to stray far from the body of the woman, refusing to give it to the ice as was custom. Then…” He revealed a shadowy image in silhouette, a man pulling a sled through a snowstorm. “He took her body north when winter came and was not seen again by the eyes of the ice people. But … he did leave a gift.”
Astorek paused, regarding Vaelin with an expression that was part reluctance, part awe. “They knew many things, these Great Boat People, the working of metal and the reckoning of the stars, even the course of the future.”
The painting revealed by Astorek’s torch was the largest yet, covering the wall from floor to ceiling and executed with an artistry and clarity that would even have outshone Alornis. It was the face of a man, perhaps thirty years in age, his features angular rather than handsome, his eyes dark, a faint smile playing over his lips. It was a hard face, not unused to privation from its slightly gaunt aspect, or violence if Vaelin was any judge. He had looked into the eyes of enough killers to know …
All thought fled as the realisation dawned. He felt Dahrena move to his side, taking his hand which, he realised, had begun to shake.
“The one who will save us from a peril yet unseen,” Astorek said. “He called him the Raven’s Shadow.”
PART III
Anyone who claims they have a genius for war should be regarded as the greatest of fools. For the successful conduct of war is an exercise in the management of folly.
—QUEEN LYRNA AL NIEREN, COLLECTED SAYINGS, GREAT LIBRARY OF THE UNIFIED REALM
VERNIERS’ ACCOUNT
We put in at Marbellis on the thirty-fifth day of our voyage where the captain took ten crewmen ashore, each laden with an impressive pile of loot and weapons harvested from various unfortunate Volarians at the Teeth and Alltor. “A ship feeds on cargo,” he grunted at me before departing. He was slightly more inclined towards conversation these days, but still refused to share any words with Fornella. “Should fetch half a hold’s worth of spice with this lot. Stay on board and keep an eye on that witch of yours.”
She joined me at the rail as I surveyed the docks and the city beyond. “I had heard this place described as the treasure of the northern empire,” she said. “I must say it seems somewhat tarnished.”
Marbellis had been in a continual state of reconstruction since the war, the various burnt and wasted districts slowly disappearing as the great port healed itself. But whilst a city could be repaired the hearts of its citizens were a different matter. The years since the war had seen many appeals to the Emperor for more direct and lasting retribution against the Northmen, the loudest and most numerous originating in Marbellis.
“‘We found a jewel in the desert,’” I quoted. “‘And from it fashioned a charred cinder.’”
“Pretty,” she said. “One of yours, I assume.”
“Actually, it was penned by a young poet I met in Varinshold. The son, in fact, of the general who commanded the army that nearly destroyed this city.”
“Couldn’t get to the father, I assume?”
“No. He refused all requests for an interview. His son, however, was happy to talk as long as I paid his nightly wine bill.”
“Did he have any excuse for this? Any particular reason?”
I shook my head. “Just regret, and guilt though he took no part in the slaughter. He was keen to point out that his father had been quick to quell the excesses of his army, executing over a hundred men for various dreadful deeds in the process.”
“Tokrev would have executed them too. Dead slaves are of no value.”
I turned back from the rail and started for the cabin we shared. “We have work to do.”
Over the preceding weeks our researches had done much to expand my knowledge of ancient myth but as yet revealed scant evidence as to the Ally’s origins or the whereabouts of the endless man he sought. There were a few references to the machinations of dark gods or malign spirits in the oldest, mostly fragmentary tales left by the denizens of what later became the Volarian Empire, but sorting fact from superstitious delusion was simply impossible. The endless man proved a more fruitful line of inquiry, unearthing no less than seven different versions of his story, mostly from Asrael and revolving around the unfortunate subject’s rejection of the Faith. However, there were other tales, one from Cumbrael which cast the fellow as a godless heretic who committed the ultimate crime of burning the Ten Books, finding himself cursed by the World Father to contemplate his sin for all eternity. Today, however, my research uncovered a Meldenean legend telling of a man washed up on the Isles after a shipwreck, a man who should have drowned but lived when all his crew-mates perished. He named himself Urlan, come in search of the Old Gods.
I looked up from the scroll as the tramp of many feet on the deck told of the captain’s success in securing cargo. Fornella had fallen to slumber already, lying naked on the bunk as was her perennial wont. She seemed to sleep more as the days went by and ever more grey appeared in her hair. You grow old, mistress, I thought, surveying her nakedness and finding, for all the wrinkles that now etched her face, she was still beautiful. I tossed a blanket over her and went outside.
Night had fallen and the deck was brightly lit with torches, most clustered at the bow where a persistent chopping sound could be heard. I went forward to find the captain standing with crossed arms, stern visage fixed on the sight of a man suspended by ropes to hang over the bow. The man was old but spry, clearly Alpiran from his colouring, working a hammer and chisel over the jawless figurehead, wood chips flying as he erased the scars from its snout. I noted a fresh but as yet unshaped block of wood had been nailed into place to fashion a new jaw for the serpent.
“Crew don’t like to sail without a god to calm the waves,” the captain grunted, watching the carpenter work. “Paid him triple to have it done by morning.”
“Which is he?” I asked, gesturing at the serpent. “An old god or a new one?”
The captain favoured me with a squint, faint amusement in his eyes. “Finding my people worthy of study now, scribbler?”
“It might help, with my mission.”
He shrugged, nodding at the figurehead. “Not a he, a she. Levansis, sister to the great serpent god Moesis. Though she despised her brother for his vicious ways, she wept when Margentis destroyed his body and her tears calmed the sea for ten full years. When the storms rise, she’s the one we pray to.”
My knowledge of Meldenean history was scant but I knew their pantheon dated back to their colonisation of the Isles some six hundred years ago, and from my survey of the ruins found there, they had clearly been
occupied long before that. “A new god then,” I said. “What can you tell me of the old ones?”
He looked away and I noted how his crossed arms tightened further. “Them we do not pray to.”
“But what are they?”
The captain cast a wary eye at the nearest of his crew, two sailors, young but both bearing scars from the Battle of the Teeth, and glaring at me in naked outrage. “Ill luck to talk of the old gods on a ship’s deck,” the captain said, moving to the gangplank. “Come, I’ll let you buy me a drink, scribbler. Besides I have news to impart.”
He led me to a quiet tavern near the warehouse district, the patrons mostly stevedores indulging in a cup or two of wine at the end of the day’s labour. Even in light of the fatigue evident in the other customers, the mood was sombre to the point of oppression, most sitting in silent contemplation of their wine. We sat beside a window, the captain lighting his pipe, the bowl filled with the sweet-smelling five-leafed weed popular in the northern empire but frowned upon elsewhere for its soporific effect.
“Ah, that’s the stuff,” the captain said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Once took some seeds home for the wife to grow. Never did, soil’s not right. Pity, could’ve made a fortune.”
“The old gods,” I said, pen poised above my scroll. “What do you know of them?”
“Well, they’re old for a start.” He gave an uncharacteristic laugh, something I attributed to the contents of his pipe. The merriment also raised some heads at the surrounding tables, a few scowling in disapproval, making me wonder what grim tidings had heralded such a mood.
“They were there when we landed on the Isles,” the captain went on, recapturing my attention. “The old gods, standing in stone, so lifelike it seems as if they’ll stir if you touch them at all.”