Wind heaves waves unseen in the shell a cup of promise unfulfilled the rank lie of salt that bites my tongue.
I dwelt by a sea, once etching histories along the endless strand in rolling scrolls of flotsam and weed.
– Rumours of the Sea Fisher kel Tath
There had been rain in the afternoon, which was just as well since there wasn’t much value in burning the entire forest down and besides, he wasn’t popular at the best of times. They had mocked his antics, and they had said he stank, too, so much so that no-one ever came within reach of his huge, gnarled hands. Of course, had any of his neighbours done so, he might well have torn their limbs off to answer years of scorn and abuse.
Old Hunch Arbat no longer pulled his cart from farm to farm, from shack to shack, collecting the excrement with which he buried the idols of the Tarthenal gods that had commanded a mostly forgotten glade deep in the woods. The need had passed, after all. The damned hoary nightmares were dead.
His neighbours had not appreciated Arbat’s sudden retirement, since now the stink of their wastes had begun to foul their own homes. Lazy wastrels that they were, they weren’t of a mind to deepen their cesspits-didn’t Old Hunch empty them out on a regular basis? Well, not any more.
That alone might have been reason enough to light out. And Arbat would have liked nothing better than to just vanish into the forest gloom, never to be seen again. Walk far, yes, until he came to a hamlet or village where none knew him, where none even knew of him. Rainwashed of all odour, just some kindly, harmless old mixed-blood Tarthenal who could, for a coin or two, mend broken things, including flesh and bone.
Walk, then. Leaving behind the old Tarthenal territories, away from the weed-snagged statues in the overgrown glades. And maybe, even, away from the ancient blood of his heritage. Not all healers were shamans, were they? They’d not ask any awkward questions, so long as he treated them right, and he could do that, easy.
Old bastards like him deserved their rest. A lifetime of service. Propitiations, the Masks of Dreaming, the leering faces of stone, the solitary rituals-all done, now. He could walk his last walk, into the unknown. A hamlet, a village, a sun-warmed boulder beside a trickling stream, where he could settle back and ease his tortured frame and not move, until the final mask was pulled away…
Instead, he had woken in darkness, in the moments before false dawn, shaking as if afflicted with ague, and before his eyes had hovered the slowly shredding fragments of a most unexpected Dream Mask. One he had never seen before, yet a visage of terrifying power. A mask crazed with cracks, a mask moments from shattering explosively-