‘I see the hunger for vengeance. The Letherii raiders must be slain. Even as prelude to the Great Meeting, for their slaying was desired . Our reaction was anticipated, for these are the games the Letherii would play with our lives. Shall we do as they intended? Of course. There can be but one answer to their crime. And thus, by our predictability, we serve an unknown design, which shall no doubt be unveiled at the Great Meeting.’
Deep-etched frowns. Undisguised confusion. Hannan Mosag had led them into the unfamiliar territory of complexity. He had brought them to the edge of an unknown path, and now would lead them forward, step by tentative step.
‘The raiders will die,’ the Warlock King resumed, ‘but not one of you shall spill their blood. We do as predicted, but in a manner they could not imagine. There will be a time for slaughter of the Letherii, but this is not that time. Thus, I promise you blood, my warriors. But not now. The raiders shall not know the honour of dying at your hands. Their fates shall be found within Kurald Emurlahn.’
Despite himself, Trull Sengar shivered.
Silence once more in the hall.
‘A full unveiling,’ Hannan Mosag continued in a rumble, ‘by my K’risnan. No weapon, no armour, shall avail the Letherii. Their mages will be blind and lost, incapable of countering that which arrives to take them. The raiders will die in pain and in terror. Soiled by fear, weeping like children – and that fate will be writ on their faces, there for those who find them.’
Trull’s heart was pounding, his mouth bone-dry. A full unveiling. What long-lost power had Hannan Mosag stumbled upon? The last full unveiling of Kurald Emurlahn had been by Scabandari Bloodeye, Father Shadow himself. Before the warren had been sundered. And that sundering had not healed. It would, Trull suspected, never be healed.
Even so, some fragments were vaster and more powerful than others. Had the Warlock King discovered a new one?
Faded, battered and chipped, the ceramic tiles lay scattered before Feather Witch. The casting was done, even as Udinaas stumbled into the mote-filled barn to bring word of the omen – to warn the young slave woman away from a scanning of the Holds. Too late. Too late .
A hundred slaves had gathered for the event, fewer than was usual, but not surprising, since many Edur warriors would have charged their own slaves with tasks of preparation for the anticipated skirmish.
Heads turned as Udinaas entered the circle. His eyes remained fixed on Feather Witch.
Her soul had already walked well back on the Path to the Holds. Her head drooped, chin between the prominent bones of her clavicles, thick yellow hair hanging down, and rhythmic trembling ran through her small, child-like body. Feather Witch had been born in the village eighteen years ago, a rare winter birth – rare in that she had survived – and her gifts had become known before her fourth year, when her dreams walked back and spoke in the voices of the ancestors. The old tiles of the Holds had been dug up from the grave of the last Letherii in the village who’d possessed the talent, and given to the child. There had been none to teach her the mysteries of those tiles, but, as it turned out, she’d needed no instruction from mortals – ghostly ancestors had provided that.
She was a handmaid to Mayen, and, upon Mayen’s marriage to Fear Sengar, she would enter the Sengar household. And Udinaas was in love with her.
Hopeless, of course. Feather Witch would be given a husband from among the better born of the Letherii slaves, a man whose bloodline held title and power back in Letheras. An Indebted, such as Udinaas, I had no hope of such a pairing.
As he stood staring at her, his friend Hulad reached up and took his wrist. Gentle pressure drew Udinaas down to a cross-legged position amidst the other witnesses.
Hulad leaned close. ‘What ails you, Udinaas?’
‘She has cast…’
‘Aye, and now we wait while she walks.’
‘I saw a white crow.’
Hulad flinched back.
‘Down on the strand. I beseeched the Errant, to no avail. The crow but laughed at my words.’
Their exchange had been overheard, and murmurs rippled out among the witnesses.
Feather Witch’s sudden moan silenced the gathering. All eyes fixed upon her, as she slowly raised her head.
Her eyes were empty, the whites clear as the ice on a mountain stream, iris and pupils vanished as if they had never been. And through the translucence swam twin spirals of faint light, smeared against the blackness of the Abyss.
Terror twisted her once-beautiful features, the terror of Beginnings, the soul standing before oblivion. A place of such loneliness that despair seemed the only answer. Yet it was also the place where power was thought, and thought flickered through the Abyss bereft of Makers, born from flesh yet to exist – for only the mind could reach back into the past, only its thoughts could dwell there. She was in the time before the worlds, and now must stride forward.