Ota Qwan took his pipe back. ‘No. I didn’t know. It’s like last year – when the honey is mature, the Wild fills up with things coming to take it. Not much time to explore.’
‘There’s a body of water there so large you can’t even see the far shore. Heron nests, and some sort of bigger bird. And huge beaver castles.’ He took the pipe, put it between his teeth, and blew a smoke ring into the darkness. ‘Want to check it out tomorrow?’
Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘We’ve already seen boggles and golden bears. I saw a pair of them moving towards the honey, and there’s never just two.’
In the morning they rose while it was still dark – ate a little honey on the remnants of their cornbread, picked up the buckets and the weapons, and started back. It took them a whole day to cross the low ground and the rocky wastes at the foot of the Beaver Kingdom, as Ota Qwan called it, and late the evening, while the scouts were looking for a place to camp and everyone else was searching for a good crossing over yet another small river, they found the dead boglins – six of them had been killed and eaten. They were all lying on the rocks of the stream.
Ta-se-ho, the oldest, crouched by the most intact corpse and rolled it over on the rocks with his spear. A cloud of bluebottles rose from the corpse and the older hunter wrinkled his nose. He was tall, with a long horsetail of dark brown hair and a scar that ran all the way up his right leg from the knee to the groin. He wore an amulet, a piece of weathered leather embroidered in quills. At some point, Peter had realised that it was a human ear.
‘Golden bears?’ asked Ota Qwan. Despite the fact that anyone who knew death could see the corpses were some days old, every warrior was crouched, looking at the trees.
Ta-se-ho shook his head. He walked over to a rock, and compared it to something only he saw.
Nita Qwan was picking his way across the ford. The boglins had died during their crossing. It had been two days ago, but still-
He stepped up out of the gully cut by the stream, and got one leather-clad foot on a rock. His thighs were still tired. All of him was tired. He put some will into his legs and powered up onto the rock, and gasped.
He pointed his spear at the boglins he had found, but they were all dead too. Strewn across a small clearing.
One had been cut in half.
He grunted, and Ta-se-ho climbed out of the stream bed and joined him.
‘Ah,’ he said. He grew pale. ‘Ah.’
Ota Qwan jumped up beside him. ‘What happened?’
Ta-se-ho moaned. ‘Crannock,’ he said. ‘Crannock people. Giants.’
Ota Qwan looked south. ‘The Crannock are allies of the Southern Huran.’
Ta-se-ho spat. ‘Thorn, too,’ he said.
North-West of the Endless Lakes – Thorn
Thorn hurried forward, excited by what he sensed, the great black egg borne on his immense trunk, secure in a web of power.
He was walking along a bay, the whole stretch of water lit in golden sunlight with pale beaches lining the deep, clear water. As he walked, the bay narrowed.
Across the bay – across a straight as wide as a river and far deeper – lay a great island. Something about that island reeked of power.
Thorn reached among the ropes and tangles of his palace of power and summoned a wind, and he spread mighty gossamer wings and flew out over the water, reckless and heedless of mere men, if any happened to see him. He rose into the setting sun, and turned south.
The island was redolent of power. And empty of other Powers.
It was not Thorn’s way to ask why.
The island was the size of a great lordship in the land of men – from the air he could see that it stretched ten leagues to the south, into the Inner Sea, and as far to the west. And at the northern edge of the island, a great mountain rose more than a thousand feet above the rolling hills and shaded dells of the island.
And set into the very top of the mountain was a lake. A river rushed from it over a steep lip and down a magnificent fall, into a deep pool at its base, and then down a further short series of falls, like steps, into the Inner Sea itself.
In the midst of the mountain lake was an island, and from the island grew a single tree. He folded his vast wings and let himself fall, and then stooped towards the island – spread his wings again in the joy of flying, and coasted to a stall just a few feet above the stony surface of the island. The tree’s canopy seemed to stretch high, but it was deceptive – the tree itself was only twice the height of the sorcerer. He banished his wings, and went to touch the tree with some trepidation. It was a thorn, and he put his great stony head back and croaked, the closest he could manage to a laugh.
He felt the power of the earth through his toes. Lines of power ran strong here – three crossed, and another passed deep under the lake and bubbled up like a spring. Like a well. Like Lissen Carrak.
The power boiled up from the ground and swirled around a basin carved by the raw power. Thorn dropped his staff and knelt, his heavy legs creaking with the effort – and thrust his long, skeletal hands deep into the green-gold swirl. He raised them and raw ops rolled down his arms.
If he had possessed the facility, he might have wept.
Instead, he forced himself to his feet, raised his dripping arms, and willed the heavens to obey him.
High in the infinite aether, his power fastened on something that was between a star and a stone, and he dragged it from the heavens. It fell, hurtling, burning brighter than Venus against the falling dark as it rushed through the air at an impossible speed and struck far out in the Inner Sea.
He stretched his hands to the heavens and roared at his enemies.
Petty revenge? Try this!
Deep in the Adnacrags, an old bear raised his muzzle against the night sky. He watched the star fall, and he didn’t like what he saw. His mate growled, and he put a great paw on her back, but she felt the tremor in his paw.
Far, far to the west, Mogon saw the new star kindle and fall, and she raised her crested head and spat.
Deep in the forest, the old irk was disturbed as he plotted, and he raised his long nose and saw, amid the trees, a new star kindle, and then plunge to earth. Tapio Haltija licked his teeth and grinned at the sight, but the movement of his mouth looked more predatory than pleasant.
East and south, Aeskepiles woke suddenly from an unsound sleep full of evil dreams. He lay on the floor of a monastic church at the edge of the Field of Ares, surrounded by the Duke of Thrake’s retainers. They snored, and farted, and grumbled – none of those things had wakened him.
High above him, stars twinkled in the heavens and their light seeped through the clerestory windows in the base of the dome. He watched as one grew and grew in light until it burned like a little sun, casting its radiance so brightly that it lit some of the stained glass of the chapel and cast barely perceptible and flickering shadows over the floor and his sleeping companions. And then it began to fall to earth.
‘Vade retro!’ spat the magister. His side ached from the wound he’d taken.
A sorcerer, somewhere, had just pulled a star down from the vault of the heavens. It was a challenge, as clearly as if he had smacked every other man of power in the world with a glove. Across the face.
Aeskepiles lay in his blankets and tried to imagine how powerful and puissant a magister had to be to pull a star from the heavens.
Then a messenger came into the chapel, calling for the Duke.
‘The Vardariotes!’ he whispered urgently. ‘They’re moving!’
The Duke grumbled like any fifty-year-old man wakened untimely. He pulled on his beard and thought for as long as a man might say a prayer.
‘Order Ser Demetrios to bring his troops back to me,’ he said.
Strategos Demetrios was the border-bred Morean who commanded most of their strength of men-at-arms. He had been sent with a little less than half their force to watch the Vardariot Gate, ten miles distant around the walls.