With dawn an hour away, Icarium led the others to the edge of the warren. Hitching the stock of his crossbow on one hip, Fiddler handed Crokus the lantern, then glanced over at Mappo.
The Trell shrugged. 'The barrier is opaque – nothing of what lies beyond is visible.'
'They know nothing of what is to come,' Iskaral Pust whispered. 'An eternal flare of pain, but shall I waste words in an effort to prepare them? No, not at all, never. Words are too precious to be wasted, hence my coy silence while they hesitate in a fit of immobile ignorance.'
Fiddler gestured with the crossbow. 'You go first, Pust.'
The High Priest gaped. 'Me?' he squealed. 'Are you mad?' He ducked his head. 'They are deceived again, even that gnarled excuse for a soldier – oh, this is too easy!'
Hissing, Crokus stepped forward, raising the lantern high, then strode through the barrier, vanishing from the others. Icarium immediately followed.
With a growl, Fiddler gestured Iskaral Pust forward.
As the two disappeared, Mappo swung to Apsalar and her father. 'You two have been through once before,' he said. 'The warren's aura clings to you both.'
Rellock nodded. 'The false trail. We had to make sure of the D'ivers and Soletaken.'
The Trell swung his gaze to Apsalar. 'What warren is this?'
'I don't know. It has indeed been torn apart. There is little hope of determining its nature given the state it's now in. And my memories tell me nothing of such a warren so destroyed.'
Mappo sighed, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension binding his muscles. 'Ah, well, why assume that the Elder Warrens we know of – Tellann, Omtose Phellack, Kurald Galain – are the only ones that existed?'
The barrier was marked by a change in air pressure. Mappo swallowed and felt his ears pop. He blinked, his senses struggling to manage the flood that rushed upon them. The Trell stood with the others in a forest of towering trees, a mix of spruce, cedar and redwood all thickly braided in moss. Blue-tinged sunlight filtered down. The air smelled of decaying vegetation and insects buzzed. The scene's ethereal beauty descended on Mappo like a cooling balm.
'Don't know what I was expecting,' Fiddler muttered, 'but it wasn't this.'
A large dolomite boulder, taller than Icarium, rose from the mulch directly ahead. Sunlight bathed it in pale green, lifting into view the shadows of grooves, pits and other shapes carved into its surface.
'The sun never moves,' Apsalar said beside the Trell. 'The light is ever at that angle, the only angle that raises those carvings to our eyes.'
The base and sides of the boulder were a mass of hand and paw prints, every one the colour of blood.
The Path of Hands. Mappo turned to Iskaral Pust. 'More of your deceit, High Priest?'
'A lone boulder in a forest? Free of lichen and moss, bleached by another world's harsh sun? The Trell is dense beyond belief, but listen to this!' He offered Mappo a wide smile. Absolutely not! How could I move such an edifice? And look at those ancient carvings, those pits and whorls, how could such things be faked?'
Icarium had walked up to stand before the boulder. He followed the wending track of one of the grooves. 'No, these are real enough. Yet they are Tellann, the kind you would find at a site sacred to the T'lan Imass – the boulder typically surmounting a hilltop on a tundra or plain. I would not expect, of course, that the D'ivers and Soletaken could be aware of such an incongruity—'
'Of course not!' Iskaral burst out, then he frowned at the Jhag. 'Why do you stop?'
'How could I otherwise? You interrupted me—'
'A lie! But no, I must stuff my outrage into a bag, a bag such as the curious sack the Trell carries – such a curious sack, that! Is there another fragment trapped within it? The possibility is ... possible. A likely likelihood, indeed, a certain certainty! I need but turn this ingenuous smile on the Jhag to show my benign patience at his foul insult, for I am a bigger man than he, oh yes. All his airs, his posturing, his poorly disguised asides – hark!' Iskaral Pust spun around, squinted into the forest beyond the boulder.
'Do you hear something, High Priest?' Icarium asked calmly.
'Hear, here?' Pust scowled. 'Why ask me that?'
Mappo asked Apsalar, 'How far into this wood have you gone?'
She shook her head. Not far.
'I'll take point,' Fiddler said. 'Straight ahead, I take it, past this rock?'
There were no alternative suggestions.
They set off, Fiddler ranging ahead, crossbow readied at hip-level, a Moranth quarrel set in the groove. Icarium followed, his bow still strapped on his back, sword sheathed. Pust, Apsalar and her father were next, with Crokus a few paces ahead of Mappo, who was the column's rearguard.
