She was an ageing woman, with skin creased and folded by the years and hair the colour of the moon on water. There were others within—the wise, the a’an chiefs of last summer, the singers and chanters and buriers of the dead and the kakyrin with their necklaces of bone—but it was the Voice alone who spoke with the na’kyrim.
They talked for a long time, the old woman and the halfbreed, and of many things. They talked of the clan’s history and of its struggles against the Huanin in the War of the Tainted and the centuries since. They talked of the evil done by those who ruled in the city in the valley, their axes and fire that cleared the trees from White Owl lands, and their herds of cattle that reached ever further into Anlane; of the na’kyrim’ s life, his flight from the White Owl as a child and eventual return, bearing gifts and promises from the cold men of the north. Through it all, the judgement was being formed, built out of the threads of the past that led to the present. Only at the end did they talk of alliances forged in necessity, and of hopes and expectations betrayed.
The Voice asked him, softly, why the lord whose army had passed through the White Owl’s forest now turned away his friends and forgot them. Why the promises of friendship the na’kyrim had made on that lord’s behalf were now so much dust. The na’kyrim had no answer to that, but spoke instead in the evil way he had. He spoke, as the White Owls now understood that he had so often before, with a tongue that made truth out of lies, that corrupted the mind’s strength and turned judgements inside out.
Had there not been so many of them there in the Voice’s tent, they might have been deceived, but they had prepared themselves for the dangers of this na’kyrim. Some cried out and sang to drown his poisonous words; others belaboured him with sticks.
He begged and pleaded but there had, in the end, to be a reckoning. However long his absence, he had been one of the people once, and he was theirs to do with as they would. The Voice gave her judgement and he was dragged out of her presence.
The na’kyrim struggled and shouted as they bore him away from the vo’an, and spoke in a way that threatened to lay wreaths of mist around the thoughts of the warriors. They beat him with the hafts of spears until he was still and silent. Then they carried him up above the valley. Up and up they climbed, until the trees grew wind-bent and the grass beneath their feet became coarse and rough. They climbed into the afternoon, until they pierced the roof of Anlane and came out upon the moors that formed a borderland between forest and sky. And still they went on amongst the rocky ridges and ravines. In time they began to descend again, and at last, upon a promontory of rock that was closely fringed by trees, they came to the Breaking Stone.
The great boulder—the height of two men—stood alone, resting where the Walking God had left it. The Breaking Stone was patterned by lichens older than the clan, older than the Kyrinin. Over and amongst their innumerable pale green and grey shades lay darker stains. Black streaks that would never now be washed away, they scarred the great rock, running down like the tracks of mid-night tears from two neat, smooth-sided sockets high upon its face.
The warriors laid the na’kyrim on the ground and stripped his clothes from his body. In that muted evening light his skin looked fragile, ashen. He stirred, but they held him firm. They gagged him with a stone wrapped in a strip of cloth. One of them brought out two sharpened, hardened shafts of willow, each the length of an arm and thicker than a man’s thumb. The na’kyrim writhed. The Kyrinin worked quickly lest he should attempt some trick upon them using his secret skills. They raised his arms and held them tightly as the shafts, twisted and turned to force their way, were driven through his wrists. The na’kyrim screamed around his gag and fell into unconsciousness.
Two warriors climbed atop the Breaking Stone and, using ropes of plaited grass tied around his chest, raised him up its face. They held him there while a third reached down and manipulated the willow stakes until they slotted into the sockets in the stone. They slid in, the stone welcoming them as it had dozens of their like before, and the na’kyrim hung there, crucified upon the Breaking Stone.
Hunching down against the rain, Orisian and the others crossed the long boardwalk across the mouth of the River Dihrve. Weed and barnacles coated the walkway’s supports below the waterline; rot was at work on the parts above. It felt safe enough—the Dihrve was a sluggish, unthreatening thing here at its mouth—but Orisian wondered how much of a life it had left to it.
They had woken to dark skies and miserable rain that gathered strength with every minute. When Orisian said that he was going to find Ess’yr and Varryn, he had half-hoped he could go alone; instead Yvane, Anyara and Rothe all accompanied him. He did not feel he could refuse them.
As they made their way along the shore to the river crossing, he had asked Yvane if an unannounced visit would cause a problem. The na’kyrim dismissed the idea.
‘They’re not so stiff about such things here,’ she said. ‘There’d not be so many na’kyrim around if they were.’
‘Ten, Hammarn said,’ Orisian remembered. ‘We haven’t see any. Are they hiding?’
‘It can’t have escaped your notice that everyone keeps themselves to themselves around here. They’re all on edge now: everybody’s nervous, smells trouble on the wind.’
She was right about the ease of entering the vo’an. No one tried to stop them as they came off the rickety bridge and walked amongst the tents. It was not, in fact, as disconcerting a place to enter as Koldihrve had been the day before. There was none of the boot-sucking mud that greeted a visitor to the human settlement—rush matting was spread in broad pathways—and none of the dark glares or muttered asides. It felt safer than the human town, at least to Orisian. The feeling did not last for long.
There was a crowd gathered in the centre of the vo’an, in a space where the bare earth had been trodden over countless years into the consistency of rock. As they approached the back of the crowd Yvane nudged Orisian with her elbow and pointed discreetly at a pole planted a few paces away. It was bedecked with horns, strings of threaded teeth and animal skulls. The bones looked fresh and unweathered.
‘That’s bad,’ Yvane whispered. ‘A war pole. Means they’re expecting deaths.’
The Kyrinin crowd stirred gently at their arrival. There was a foul smell, Orisian realised, foul enough to make him almost gag. The crowd thinned a little before them; it let them see what stood at its centre.
A wooden frame was there, of the sort used to suspend a carcass while it was butchered. Upon the frame was bound a naked, lifeless Kyrinin. His head hung forwards and his white hair had fallen across his face like a shroud. From shoulder to hip, long thin strips of skin had been peeled back, wound on sticks. The flaying had left livid, gory bands of raw flesh exposed. He had been disembowelled, so that his entrails spilled forth to pile upon the ground beneath him. His groin was a bloody mess. An ordurous stench hung suffocatingly in the air and Orisian felt bile in his mouth as his stomach twisted itself. He heard Anyara’s faint moan of disgust even as he turned away. Three young Fox children were standing close by. They watched him with bland curiosity. One had a bow and quiver—little more than toys—in his tiny, fine hands.