No. ‘Found,’ Udinaas managed, ‘how old are you?’
‘I forget.’
‘How old were you before the ice broke the city?’
‘Seven.’
Triumphant, Udinaas spun to face Feather Witch.
‘Seven,’ the boy said again. ‘Seven weeks. Mother kept saying I was growing too fast, so I must be tall for my age.’
Feather Witch’s smile was strangely broken.
The Bentract warrior spoke again.
The boy nodded, and said, ‘Ulshun Pral says he has a question he wants to ask you.’
A numbed reply, ‘Go ahead.’
‘Rae’d. Veb entara tog’rudd n’lan n’vis thai? List vah olar n’lan? Ste shabyn?’
‘The women want to know if I will eat them when I get older. They want to know what dragons eat. They want to know if they should be afraid. I don’t know what all that means.’
‘How can they be eaten? They’re-’ Udinaas stopped. Errant take me, they don’t know they’re dead! ‘Tell them not to worry, Found.’
‘Ki’bri arasteshabyn bri por’tol tun logdara kul absi.’
‘Ulshun Pral says they promised her to take care of me until she returns.’
‘Entara tog’rudd av?’
The boy shook his head and replied in the warrior’s language.
‘What did he ask?’ Udinaas demanded.
‘Ulshun Pral wanted to know if you’re my father. I told him my father’s dead. I told him, no, you aren’t. My father was Araq Elalle. He died.’
In Letherii, Feather Witch said, ‘Tell him, Udinaas.’
‘No. There’s nothing to tell.’
‘You would leave him to that… woman ?’
He spun to face her. ‘And what would you have me do? Take him with us? We’re not even here! ’
‘T’un havra’ad eventara. T’un veb vol’raele bri rea han d En’ev?’
The boy said, ‘Ulshun Pral is understanding you now. Some. He says there are holes and would you like to go there?’
‘Holes?’ Udinaas asked.
Feather Witch snorted. ‘Gates. He means gates. I have been sensing them. There are gates, Udinaas. Powerful ones.’
‘All right,’ Udinaas said to Found.
‘I don’t like that place,’ the boy said. ‘But I will come with you. It’s not far.’
They strode towards the mouth of one of the larger caves. Passed into the cool darkness, the rough floor sloping upward for twenty or so paces, then beginning to dip again. Into caverns with the walls crowded with painted images in red and yellow ochre, black outlines portraying ancient beasts standing or running, some falling with spears protruding from them. Further in, a smaller cavern with black stick-like efforts on the walls and ceiling, a struggling attempt by the T’lan Imass to paint their own forms. Blooms of red paint outlining ghostly hand-prints. Then the path narrowed and began a gradual ascent once more. Ahead, a vertical fissure from which light spilled inward, a light filled with flowing colours, as if some unearthly flame burned beyond.
They emerged onto an uneven but mostly level sweep of blackened bedrock. Small boulders set end to end formed an avenue of approach from the cave mouth that led them on an inward spiral towards the centre of the clearing. Beyond, the sky shimmered with swirling colours, like shattered rainbows. A cairn of flat stones dominated the centre of the spiral, in the rough, awkward form of a figure standing on two legs made of stacked stones, a single broad one forming the hips, the torso made of three more, the arms each a single projecting, rectangular stone out to the side, the head a single, oblong rock sheathed in lichen. The crude figure stood before a squat tower-like structure with at least twelve sides. The facings were smooth, burnished like the facets of natural crystal. Yet light in countless colours flared beneath each of those surfaces, each plane spiralling inward to a dark hole.
Udinaas could feel a pressure in the air, as of taut forces held in balance. The scene seemed perilously fragile.
‘Vi han onralmashalle. S’ril k’ul havra En’ev. N’vist’. Lan’te.’
‘Ulshun says his people came here with a bonecaster. It was a realm of storms. And beasts, countless beasts coming from those holes. They did not know what they were, but there was much fighting.’
The T’lan Imass warrior spoke again, at length.
‘Their bonecaster realized that the breaches must be sealed, and so she drew upon the power of stone and earth, then rose into her new, eternal body to stand before the wounds. And hold all with stillness. She stands there now and she shall stand there for all time.’
