“All right, then.” Stooping, Skragdal picked up the ram’s corpse and slung it over his shoulder. Its head lolled, blood gathering to fall in slow drops from its gashed throat. It had seemed like a gift, this fine, clean kill, and now it was spoiled. Feeling obscurely cheated, he glared at the other Fjel. “Why is it so hard to kill these smallfolk?”
For a long moment, no one answered.
“Don’t worry, boss.” Blågen broke the silence with the fearless insouciance of the Cold Hunters. “We’ll find them.”
“You had better,” Skragdal said grimly. “It is the only thing his Lordship has asked of us.” He held Blågen’s gaze until the Kaldjager blinked. “Back to the clan’s gatheringplace,” he said. “We will share out our gear there.”
“Then we hunt?”
“Yes.” Skragdal grunted, shifting the ram’s corpse on his shoulder. “And we go to Neherinach to lay a trap.”
They were waiting for her in the great hall.
Sunlight blazed through the tall windows that surrounded it, glistening on the polished amber wood of the long table and the marble floor with its intricately laid pattern of white and a pale, veined blue. In the center of the table was a gilded coffer inlaid with gems. Between the windows, pennants hung from gilded poles. The clear windows were bordered with narrow panes of sea-blue glass, and the slanting sunlight threw bars of cerulean across the room.
It looked, Lilias thought, like a beautiful prison-chamber.
Ingolin the Wise presided at the head of the table, with Malthus the Counselor at his right hand and Aracus Altorus at his left. The others were Ellylon. Lorenlasse of Valmaré she knew; the others, she did not, although their faces were familiar. All of it was familiar. One of the Ellylon was a woman, with features so lovely at close range that Lilias could have wept.
Instead, under the combined weight of their regard, she froze in the doorway.
“Go on.” Blaise prodded her from behind. He pointed to an empty chair on one side of the table, isolated from the rest. “Take your seat.”
Lilias took a deep breath and entered the room, crossing through the bars of blue light. She drew out the chair and sat, glancing back at Blaise. He had positioned himself like a guard beside the tall doorway. High above him, on the pediment that capped the entrance, was the room’s sole imperfection: a shattered marble relief that had once depicted the head of Meronin Fifth-Born, Lord of the Seas.
The memory evoked pain—the splintering pain she had endured when the sculpture had been demolished—but it evoked other memories, too. Lilias raised her chin a fraction, daring to face the assembly.
“Lilias of Beshtanag,” Ingolin said. “You have been brought here before us that we might gain knowledge of one another.”
“Am I on trial here, my lord?” she inquired.
“You are not.” His voice was somber. “We seek the truth, yes. Not to punish, but only to know. Willing or no, you are a guest in Meronil and I have vouched for your well-being.” He pointed at the ruined pediment. “You see here that which was once the work of Haergan the Craftsman. I think, perhaps, that it is not unfamiliar to you, Sorceress. Did you speak to us in this place using Haergan’s creation, claiming that the Lady Cerelinde was in Beshtanag?”
“Yes.” She threw out the truth. Let them make of it what they would. Around the table, glances were exchanged. Aracus Altorus gritted his teeth. She remembered how he had reacted when she had made Meronin’s head speak words he despised, leaping onto the table, hurling an Ellylon standard like a javelin.
“How did you accomplish such a thing?” Ingolin frowned in thought. “It is Ellyl magic Haergan wrought, and not sympathetic to Men’s workings. Even the Soumanië should not have been able to command matter at such a distance.”
“No, my lord.” Lilias shook her head. “I used Haergan’s mirror.”
“Ah.” The Lord of the Rivenlost nodded. “It was in the dragon’s hoard.” Sorrow darkened his grey eyes. “We have always wondered at Haergan’s end. It is a difficult gift to bear, the gift of genius. A dangerous gift.”
“To be sure,” Lilias said absently. Although she did not know the details of Haergan’s end, Calandor’s words echoed in her thoughts, accompanied by the memory of his slow, amused blink. I might not have eaten him if he had been more ussseful.
“Why?” It was the Ellyl woman who spoke, and the sound of her voice was like bells; bells, or silver horns, a sound to make mortal flesh shiver in delight, were it not infused with anger. She leaned forward, her lambent eyes aglow with passion. “Why would you do such a thing?”
Her words hung in the air. No one else spoke. Lilias glanced from face to face around the table. Plainly, it was a question all of them wanted answered; and as clearly, it was an answer none of them would understand.
“Why do you seek to fulfill Haomane’s Prophecy?” she asked them. “Tell me that, and perhaps we may understand one another.”
“Lilias.” Malthus spoke her name gently. “These things are not the same, and well you know it. Urulat is Sundered from itself. We seek that which Haomane the Lord-of-Thought himself seeks—to heal the land, so restore it to the wholeness and glory to which it was Shaped, and which Satoris Banewreaker has perverted.”
“Why?” Lilias repeated. They stared at her in disbelief, except for Malthus, who looked thoughtful. She folded her hands on the table and met their stares. “I ask in earnest, my lords, my lady. Was Urulat such a paradise before it was Sundered?”
“We had the light of the Souma!” Lorenlasse of Valmaré’s voice was taut with fury, his bright eyes glittering. “We are Haomane’s Children and we were torn from his side, from all that sustained us.” He regarded her with profound contempt. “You cannot possibly know how that feels.”
“Lorenlasse,” Ingolin murmured.
Lilias laughed aloud. There was freedom in having nothing left to lose. She pointed at the lifeless Soumanië on Aracus’ brow. “My lord Lorenlasse, until very recently, I held a piece of the Souma itself. I stretched the Chain of Being and held mortality at bay. I had power to Shape the very stuff of life, and I could have twisted your bones like jackstraws for addressing me in such a tone. Do not speak to me of what I can or cannot know.”
“My lord Ingolin,” The Ellyl woman turned to the Lord of the Rivenlost. The rigid lines of her body expressed her distaste. “It seems to me that there is naught to be gained in furthering this discussion.”
“Hold, Lady Nerinil” Malthus lifted one hand, forestalling her. “There may yet be merit in it Lilias.” He fixed his gaze upon her. Seated among Ellylon, he looked old and weary. “Your questions are worthy ones,” he said. “Let me answer one of them. Yes, Urulat was a paradise, once. In the First Age, before the world was Sundered, when the world was new-made and the Shapers dwelled among us.” Malthus smiled, gladness transforming his face. “When Men had yet to discover envy and delighted in the skills of the Ellylon; when the Were hunted only with Oronin’s blessing and the Fjeltroll heeded Neheris, and the Dwarfs tilled the land and coaxed forth Yrinna’s bounty.” On his breast, the clear Soumanië blazed into life. “That is the world the Lord-of-Thought shaped,” he said quietly. “That is the world we seek to restore.”
Lilias blinked, willing away an onslaught of tears. “It may be, Counselor. But that world was lost long before Urulat was Sundered.”
“Through folly,” Aracus said unexpectedly. “Men’s folly; our folly. What Haomane wrought, we unmade through covetousness and greed.”
“Men did not begin the Shapers’ War,” Lilias murmured.