“You said I should learn its music well.”
“Did I? It was so long ago. There have been so many visions since.” Her hand reached down to the stack of firewood at her feet, tossing some branches into the flames. “Still serving your Faith?” she asked.
“My Faith was a lie. Though I think you knew that.”
“Is a lie really a lie if it is honestly believed? Your people sought to make sense of the world’s many mysteries with their Faith. Misguided perhaps, but based on a truth not fully revealed.”
The thing that lived in Barkus, the cruelty of its laugh. “A soul can be trapped in the Beyond.”
“Not all souls, only those with a gift. This power, this fire that burns in you and I, doesn’t cease burning when our life fades.”
“And when it slips into the void. What then?”
Her aged lips formed a smile. “I suspect I’ll discover that myself before long.”
“Something lives there, in the void. Something that takes these souls and twists them, making them serve its purpose, sending them back to take the bodies of other gifted.”
Her eyebrows rose in faint surprise. “So, it grew after all.”
“What grew? What is it that lives there?”
She turned her blank eyes to him, face heavy with regret. “I do not know. All I know is that it needs. It hungers.”
“What for?”
She voiced her answer with a flat certainty making doubts redundant, “Death.”
“Can you tell me how to defeat it?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “But I can tell you it has to be fought, if you care about this world and its people.”
He looked up at the small patch of night sky visible through the branches above, seeing the seven stars of the sword. This high in the sky meant it was early autumn here, though how many years before his time was an unfathomable mystery. “Has it happened yet?” he asked. “Have my people come to take this land?”
“I’ll be many years dead before that happens. Though I’ve had enough visions from that time to make me thankful for it.”
“And the future? The future of this land?”
She stared into the fire for some time and he suspected she wouldn’t answer, but eventually she said, “You are as far into the future as I’ve seen, Beral Shak Ur. After you, there is no future. None that I can see.”
“And yet you would have me fight?”
“My gift is not absolute. Many things remain hidden. And in any case, what else would you do? Give up your hope and sit waiting for the end?”
“Your people require persuasion to grant passage through the forest. What do I tell them?”
Her brow creased into an amused frown. “Tell them I said they should. That might help.”
“And that will be enough?”
Her frown turned into a laugh, bitter and short. “I haven’t the faintest notion. The people you find in this forest may speak my language and share my blood, but they are not my people. Those who come to touch the stone are shadows of former greatness and beauty. They gather in tribes and pursue their endless feuds with the Lonak, myth and legend has replaced knowledge and wisdom. They have forgotten who they were, allowed themselves to be diminished.”
“If they don’t join with me, then even that shadow of your greatness will be gone, along with any chance that it might one day be rebuilt.”
“What is broken remains so. It is the way of things.” She turned to the stone. “We did not craft these vessels of memory and time, they were here long before us. We merely divined their use, and even then they prove fickle, taking the minds of those they deem unworthy. Once a people far greater than the Seordah crafted wonders and built cities the length and breadth of this land. Now, even their name is lost forever.”
She turned back to the fire and fell silent, features sagging with fatigue. “I had hoped our final meeting might be joyous, that when you came it would be with tales of a wife and family, a long life lived in peace.”
He reached for her hand, knowing it would feel nothing, but let it hover there for a moment. “It grieves me to disappoint you so.”
She said nothing and he sensed that her vision was fading. He returned to the stone, extending his hand then hesitating. “Good-bye, Nersus Sil Nin.”
She didn’t turn around. “Good-bye, Beral Shak Ur. If you win your war, return to the stone. Perhaps you’ll find someone new to talk to.”
“Perhaps.” He pressed his palm to the stone, daylight returning in an instant, banishing the night’s chill. He drew a breath, forcing authority into his voice as he turned to address the Seordah. “The blind woman has spoken . . .”
He trailed off when he saw their gaze was elsewhere, all twelve Seordah chiefs now on their feet staring at something to the side of him. Dahrena stood nearby, eyes wide in wonder. He turned and the song surged.
The wolf sat on its haunches, green eyes regarding him with the scrutiny he remembered so well. He couldn’t recall its being so large before, standing at least as tall as he. After a moment it licked its lips and raised its snout, a great howl rising to the sky, loud enough to banish all other sound, filling the ears of all present to the point of pain.
The wolf lowered its snout, the howl fading and for a heartbeat silence ruled the forest, then it came, rising from the trees for miles around, the answering howl of every wolf in the Great Northern Forest. On and on it went as the wolf rose to trot forward, its great head level with his chest, nostrils twitching as it sniffed him. He could hear its song, the alien tune he remembered from the day Dentos died, the music so strange as to be baffling, but one note was clear and unmistakable. Trust. It has trust in me.
The wolf nuzzled his hand, its tongue lapping once, then turned and bounded away, a blur of silver in the trees, soon vanished from sight. The great howling faded with it.
Hera Drakil and the other Seordah came forward, forming a circle around him, the shadowy warriors emerging from the trees to surround him, men and women of fighting age all holding their war clubs out before them as one. Hera Drakil raised his own club, holding it flat and level. “Tomorrow,” the Seordah chief said, “I will sing my war song to the rising sun, and guide you through this forest.”
“No fires are to be lit, no wood cut, no game taken. All men will remain in their companies and not wander away from the line of march. We walk only where the Seordah tell us.”
He saw some of his captains exchange wary glances, Adal’s face betraying the most unease. “And punishment for transgression, my lord?” he asked.
“Punishment won’t be needed,” Vaelin said. “The Seordah will enforce these rules, of that they have left me in little doubt.”
“I would be remiss, my lord, if I did not report the temper of the men,” Adal went on. “Open dissent is quickly quelled, as per your order, but we cannot still every tongue.”
“What is it now?” Vaelin ran a weary hand through his hair. The meeting with Nersus Sil Nin had left him troubled, the scarcity of knowledge she could impart leaving an irksome uncertainty. Also, he was coming to realise why he had never relished command. They’re always so endlessly malcontent. “Boots too hard? Training too tough?”
“They’re scared of the forest,” Nortah said. “Not that I blame them. Scares the life out of me and I’ve yet to set foot in it.”
“I see,” Vaelin said. “Well, any man too craven to walk through some trees has my permission to leave. Once they’ve surrendered their arms, boots, supplies and any pay they’ve received to date, they can make their way home and wait for a Volarian fleet to appear and enjoy the ensuing spectacle of slaughter. Perhaps then they’ll consider the true price of cowardice.” He rested balled fists on the map table, sighing through gritted teeth. “Or you could just give me a list of the most vocal grumblers and I’ll have them flogged.”
“I’ll speak to them,” Dahrena said as the captains fidgeted in uncomfortable silence. “Allay some fears.”