He felt a sudden pressure wash over him from behind.
Baffled, all at once frightened, his weapon’s stone tip carving a furrow in the dry soil, the First Sword slowly swung round.
He could deny. He could refuse. But these choices would not lead him to the knowledge he sought. He had been forced back from the realms of death. The blood ties he had chosen had been severed. No longer a husband, a father, a brother. He had been given vengeance, but what vengeance could he find sifting through a valley heaped with corpses? There were other purposes, other reasons for walking this pathetic world once again. Onos T’oolan had been denied his rightful end-he intended to find out why.
Not one among the thousand or so T’lan Imass approaching him had yet touched his thoughts. They walked enshrouded in silence, ghosts, kin reduced to strangers.
He waited.
Children of the Ritual, yes, but his sense of many of them told him otherwise. There was mystery here. T’lan Imass, and yet…
When all the others halted their steps, six bonecasters emerged, continuing their approach.
He knew three. Brolos Haran, Ulag Togtil, Ilm Absinos. Bonecasters of the Orshayn T’lan Imass. The Orshayn had failed to appear at Silverfox’s Gathering. Such failure invited presumptions of loss. Extinction. Fates to match those of the Ifayle, the Bentract, the Kerluhm. The presumption had been erroneous.
The remaining three were wrong in other ways. They were clothed in the furs of the white bear-a beast that had come late in the age of the Imass-and their faces were flatter, the underlying structure more delicate than that of true Imass. Their weapons were mostly bone, ivory, tusk or antler, with finely chipped chert and flint insets. Weapons defying the notion of finesse: intricate in their construction and yet the violence they would deliver promised an almost primitive brutality.
Bonecaster Ulag Togtil spoke. ‘First Sword. Who knew dust could be so interesting?’
There was a frustrated hiss from Brolos Haran. ‘He insists on speaking for us, and yet he never says what we wish him to say. Why we ever acquiesce is a mystery.’
‘I have my own paths,’ Ulag said easily, ‘and I do not imagine the First Sword lacks patience.’
‘Not patience,’ snapped Brolos, ‘but what about tolerance?’
‘Bone bends before it breaks, Brolos Haran. Now, I would say more to the First Sword, before we all await the profundity of his words. May I?’
Brolos Haran half-turned to Ilm Absinos, one hand lifting in an odd gesture that baffled Onos T’oolan-for a moment-before he understood.
Helplessness.
‘First Sword,’ Ulag resumed, ‘we do not reach to you in the manner of Tellann, because we make no claim upon you. We are summoned, yes, but it was-we have come to believe-not by your hand. You may refuse us. It is not in our hearts to force ourselves upon the will of another.’
Onos T’oolan said, ‘Who are these strangers?’
‘Profound indeed,’ Ulag said. ‘First Sword, they are T’lan Imass of a second Ritual. The descendants of those who sought to follow Kilava Onass when she rejected the first Ritual. It was their failure not to determine beforehand Kilava’s attitude to being accompanied. But when there is but one hole in the ice, then all must use it to breathe.’
‘My sister invited no one.’
‘Alas. And so it comes to this. These three are bonecasters of the Brold T’lan Imass. Lid Ger, Lera Epar and Nom Kala. The Brold number two thousand seven hundred and twelve. The majority of these remain in the dust of our wake. Our own Orshayn number six hundred and twelve-you see them here. If you need us, we shall serve.’
Nom Kala studied the First Sword, this warrior she had once believed was nothing but an invention, a myth. Better, she concluded, had he remained so. His bones were latticed, as if he had been pounded into fragments-and some of those bones were not even his own.
The First Sword was not the giant of the legends. He did not wear a cloak of ice. Caribou antlers did not sprout from his head. He did not possess breath that gave the gift of fire. Nor did he seem the kind of warrior to recount his exploits for three days and four nights to belittle an overly proud hero. She began to suspect few of those ancient tales belonged to this figure at all. Dancing across the sea on the backs of whales? Crossing swords with demon walruses in their underwater towers? The secret seducer of wives left alone at night?
How many children among her clan, generation upon generation, bore some variation of the name Onos, to account for impossible pregnancies?
The sudden shocked gulp that erupted from her drew everyone’s attention.
