Many scowls focused on Cormack and his obvious Abellican attire, but Androosis was there, along with Toniquay and Canrak, instructing his kin that this particular monk was no enemy of Yossunfier.
As the trio glided in near the beach, strong hands grabbed the craft and ushered it up onto the beach. Toniquay stepped front and center before Milkeila as she exited the boat, the higher-ranking shamans deferring to him because of his intimate knowledge of this situation and these participants.
He stared at Milkeila for just a few moments, then scrutinized Cormack, his expression giving the man no indication of how much his actions had ingratiated him to the barbarians. Then Toniquay’s gaze fell over Bransen, but only for a moment.
“What do you presume?” Toniquay asked Milkeila. He waited just a short while of uncomfortable silence before adding, “Do you believe that your friend has earned the right to step onto our land simply because he, unlike so many of his kin, took a moral road? Do you think that all past wrongs will be simply forgotten?”
“It was at great personal cost!” Milkeila replied, instinctively defending her lover, who put a hand on her arm to calm her. “But that is not why we have come. Cormack signaled to me and I answered his call.”
“Signaled?” Toniquay said suspiciously. “And how did he know a way in which he might signal you, Milkeila? And how did you know to answ…” He stopped and waved his hand and shook his head. His point had been made that the woman would surely have to answer for her apparent secret relationship with this Abellican, but Toniquay was more interested in hearing Milkeila’s tale at that time.
“Why is he here?” the shaman asked.
“Cormack found this man, Bransen,” Milkeila replied, and she put her hand on Bransen’s shoulder. The man in the black suit nodded, though he obviously understood little of the conversation.
“Bransen fell from the glacier,” said Milkeila.
Toniquay looked at her skeptically, and doubting murmurs grew all about them. “Then he would be dead,” Toniquay said.
“But he is not,” said Milkeila. “Whether through simple luck and soft mud, or his extraordinary powers-and he is truly blessed-I know not. But he is here, and he was up there, and he comes to us with a dire warning. The Ancient of the Samhaists has taken the glacier as his home, and plots now to destroy all of us who dwell upon Mithranidoon.”
“Samhaists?” Toniquay echoed. He had heard the name before, in the private discussions among the shamans about people who lived beyond Mithranidoon’s warm waters. The Samhaists, so it was rumored, had given this place its name, though that had been centuries before. In the lore of Yan Ossum, shamans had gone south to teach their magic to the men of Honce, long before the many battles and wars between the two peoples. In Alpinadoran mythology, Samhaist magic was a direct offshoot of the Alpinadoran Ancient Gods, though in Samhaist lore, the order, and who taught whom, was of course reversed.
“This stranger is from outside of Mithranidoon?” Toniquay asked. “Strange then that he arrives just a few years after the Abellicans. Before them, none had come to us from the outside since the powries, before my father’s father was born.” Even as he denied the possibility, though, Toniquay had to admit that the man’s clothing was fairly convincing, and unlike anything he had ever seen.
“He is an Abellican spy,” someone from the side yelled, a sentiment that was echoed through the crowd.
“He is not of my former comrades,” Cormack answered. “He is no Abellican, and has only been to Chapel Isle on one occasion-yesterday-to deliver the same message there that we deliver here. This is no trick, Toniquay. On my word, for what that is worth to you. I found this man in the mud on the northern bank of Mithranidoon, injured. He came to us with a tale that you must hear, that my people must hear, that the powries must hear. For if he speaks truly, and I believe that he does, then all of us are in dire peril, and will soon be washed from our homes.”
Toniquay stared hard at Cormack for just a few moments and then motioned to some of his nearby tribesmen. Soon the trio found themselves surrounded by armed Alpinadoran warriors.
Cormack immediately turned to Bransen and grabbed the man by the arm. “They are honorable, but careful,” he said in the common language of Honce.
“I insist that you remain with us while we investigate your claims,” Toniquay explained.
“Be fast, for all our sakes,” Milkeila answered.
Toniquay nodded his agreement and motioned to the warriors, who escorted Bransen and Cormack to a nearby hut, while Milkeila stayed with Toniquay and the other shamans.
She knew what they would do, and was not surprised when several of the more powerful shamans called down high-flying birds. Weaving spells, they each bound their sight to that of an individual bird, then sent the winged creatures on their way, and for the next several minutes, the powerful elders saw through the eyes of their familiars. Unlike Ancient Badden’s heightened powers, though, these shamans couldn’t control their familiars, and so they were at the whims of the aerial creatures.
Still, it didn’t take very long for more than one of the birds to climb above the glacial rim, and the ice castle gleamed in the midday light.
To her surprise, a most pleasant one, Milkeila was allowed to leave Yossunfier with her two companions. She had not been forgiven, Toniquay assured her, and would ultimately have to answer the many questions her arrival with the men of Honce had raised, beyond the worries of some strange “Ancient” plotting atop the glacier.
Now, though, given the revelations, they all had more important issues before them, so Milkeila, Bransen, and Cormack paddled off for Red Cap Island, while Toniquay and the others plotted as to how they would best bring all the Alpinadoran tribes of the islands together again in an even more urgent cause.
Father De Guilbe rubbed his face and leaned back in his seat, breathing hard.
“It cannot be,” Brother Giavno said, shaking his head in denial.
“Exactly as the stranger said,” De Guilbe confirmed. He tossed a soul stone back onto his desk, the same stone that had just allowed him an out-of-body journey, where he had willed his spirit to fly up to the great glacier looming over Mithranidoon.
“They are boring a chasm that will collapse the front edge of the glacier into our lake,” he explained.
“Ancient Badden?”
“It can only be. The castle of ice has the Samhaist tree design.”
“Then Cormack was not lying, and the stranger is…?”
“Of no concern to us at this time,” Father De Guilbe answered. “We must be gone from this place posthaste. Our time here was not profitable-we claimed not a single soul-and so we will continue our mission elsewhere.”
“We will allow Ancient Badden to destroy the lake and all who live upon it?”
“What choice have we, Brother?”
Brother Giavno trembled and lifted his hands several times, as if about to divulge some plan. But alas, he had no answers.
“Prepare the brothers, prepare the boats,” Father De Guilbe instructed.
The differences between the reactions of the three peoples were not lost on the foursome of Bransen, Cormack, Milkeila, and Mcwigik. In fact, the reaction of the supposedly vile powries as compared to that of the humans proved startling to the two men and Milkeila-startling and embarrassing.
“Yach, but ye done good!” Kriminig the powrie leader congratulated Mcwigik after he had led Bransen and the others to his boss so that the stranger could tell his tale. “That beast up there’s thinking to be dumping on us when we’re not knowing, but now that we’re knowing, we’re the ones to be doing the dumping!”
“You know of Ancient Badden?” Cormack dared interject.
“Ye just telled me of him,” Kriminig replied, as if he didn’t understand the point of the question, and while the dwarf leader began barking commands at his charges, readying them for a fight, the three humans found a moment of quiet discussion.