The Swordmainnir needed better care than she had given them earlier. Now she treated their many wounds with more diligence. Walking slowly among the women, she tended severed nerves and blood vessels, ripped flesh and muscles. Gently she cauterised bleeding, burned away sepsis, repaired bone. The Giants were hardy: their wellsprings of health ran deep. Nevertheless the virulence of the poisons left by the fangs and blood of the monsters shocked her. Already every wound oozed with infection. The most severe hurts required a delicate balance of power and precision.
Kindwind’s condition was the worst. Septicemia had polluted her bloodstream, and her long exertions had spread its taint throughout her body. Linden could not cleanse away the infection until she had searched the marrow of Kindwind’s bones with percipience and strict fire.
By comparison, repairing the structure of Bluntfist’s cheek was a simple task, easily completed. The burns suffered by Liand, the Ramen, and Stave responded well to their given healing.
Linden expected her own weariness to hamper her efforts, but it did not. Andelain’s air was a roborant, restoring her reserves. It dimmed the effects of Kevin’s Dirt. Every glance around the ineffable Hills strengthened her. And the grass under her boots sent a caress of warmth and generosity along her nerves. While she worked, she found that she was capable of more than she had imagined.
The krill was in Andelain. Esmer had said so. The Hills themselves might make her strong enough to fulfil her intentions.
As she tended the Swordmainnir, their wonder and thankfulness gathered palpably around her. The tales of their people had not prepared them for what could be accomplished with health-sense and Earthpower. Even the First and Pitchwife had never seen her wield the Staff as she used it here.
If these women ever found their way Home, they would tell long tales about Linden’s efforts. Like the other Giants whom she had known, they relished small miracles as much as grander achievements.
When Cabledarm and Latebirth returned, they bore huge stacks of deadwood. For a moment, Cabledarm bowed over the spot where she meant to build a fire as if she were asking the grass and ground to forgive her. Then she readied a small pile of twigs and kindling, took out her pouch of tinder and stones, and began to strike sparks.
As the wood began to burn, Linden cared for Cabledarm and Latebirth with the same attentiveness that she had expended on Coldspray and her other companions.
In the west, the sun was setting among the tallest trees. Long shadows blurred by distance streaked the hillside while darkness accumulated in the margins of Salva Gildenbourne. A soothing breeze wafted like beneficence among the Hills. Pahni and Bhapa brought back an abundance of aliantha to nourish the company. And water was plentiful nearby. The stream which had led the Giants here ran eastward along the foot of the slope until it found its own course into Andelain.
Within the borders of the Land’s essential health and bounty, Rime Coldspray and her comrades formed a circle around Cabledarm’s fire and began their ritual of grief.
They were Giants: they took their time. Dusk and then night covered the hillside. Slowly stars added their cold glitter to the subdued dance of the flames. In the numinous dark, the Swordmainnir raised their voices as if they addressed Andelain and the wide heavens as well as each other.
First the Ironhand spoke sternly of “fault.” The previous night, she had accepted some responsibility for Longwrath’s condition. Now she claimed a similar blame for Scend Wavegift’s death. Certainly Latebirth had erred. She was mortaclass="underline" she could be taken by surprise, or suffer mishap, as easily as any being defined by birth and death. But she had not caused Longwrath’s plight-and the deed of Wavegift’s end was his, not Latebirth’s.
Then Coldspray assumed the fault-if fault there was-for Moire Squareset, who had been slain by the skurj. Responsibility belonged to the Ironhand, whose decisions led the Swordmainnir. Like Wavegift’s, Squareset’s blood was on Coldspray’s hands or no one’s, for even Longwrath could not be held accountable. While she lived, she would both accuse and forgive herself.
When she was done, she knelt beside the fire and reached into the heart of the flames with both hands as though she sought to burn them clean.
Her flesh refused the harm of fire, but it could not refuse the pain. Her act was a deliberate immolation: in flame and willing agony, she surrendered her bereavement and remorse. This was the Giantish caamora, the articulation of their grief. In some sense, Linden understood it, although it filled her with dismay. Coldspray kept her hands in the fire while Cabledarm stoked it with more and more wood. A scream stretched the lronhand’s mouth, but she did not permit herself to voice it. The flames spoke for her.
The Ramen watched with their fists clenched and a kind of ferocity in their eyes. Long ago, their ancestors had known the Unhomed. Ramen may have witnessed a caamora: they had certainly given the story to their descendants. But millennia had passed since any Ramen had seen what transpired here. Their legends could not have prepared them for the intensity of Coldspray’s chosen excruciation.
Liand stood near Pahni, but he did not touch her. He needed his arms; needed to clasp them across his chest with all of his strength in order to contain his horror and empathy, his protests. Unlike the Ramen and Linden-and the Haruchai- he had nothing except his health-sense to help him comprehend what he was seeing.
Finally Coldspray withdrew. As she regained her feet, her arms trembled, and tears spilled from her eyes. But her hands were whole.
Cirrus Kindwind was the next to speak. In careful detail, alternately grave and humorous, she described Moire Squareset’s training and initiation among the Swordmainnir. Kindwind herself, with Onyx Stonemage and two other Giants, had been charged with developing Squareset’s skills, and she remembered those years with loving vividness. She knew Squareset’s strengths and weaknesses intimately, and she gave them all to the night.
Then she took her turn in the flames. The harsh silence of her pain and rue was so loud that Linden did not know how to bear it.
When Kindwind was done, Stormpast Galesend told similar tales of Scend Wavegift. She, too, thrust her hands into the fire. Grueburn, Bluntfist, and the rest of the Giants related their experiences with Wavegift and Squareset, their shared love and laughter, their memories of blunders and triumphs and longing. Each in turn, they offered their grief to the flames, and endured agony, and were annealed. Separately as well as together, they gave the ambergris of their woe to the dead.
But Linden turned away long before the Giants were done. She could not release her own tears and fury: they had been fused, made adamantine, by Roger’s betrayal and Jeremiah’s immeasurable suffering. She, too, yearned for a caamora- but not like this. Her heart craved an altogether different fire.
When she had gained some distance from the firelight and the Giants, she spent a while studying the vast isolation of the stars. In the expanse of the heavens, only the faintest glimmer of their mourning reached her-or each other. Yet she heeded their infinite lament. They could not burn away their loneliness without extinguishing themselves.
In that aspect of their limitless sojourn, she understood them better than she did the Giants. They calmed her as if she were in the presence of kindred spirits.