PART TWO

Orphans

Heaven took my wife. Now it

Has also taken my son.

My eyes are not allowed a

Dry season. It is too much

For my heart. I long for death.

When the rain falls and enters

The earth, when a pearl drops into

The depths of the sea, you can

Dive in the sea and find the

Pearl, you can dig in the earth

And find the water. But no one

Has ever come back from the

Underground Springs. Once gone, life

Is over for good. My chest

Tightens against me. I have

No one to turn to. Nothing,

Not even a shadow in a mirror.

—MEI YAO CH’EN

24 Terrible Flame

In the wild lands north of Kwanitupul, the swamp called the Varn stretched in a broad tongue of wet lowland all the way to the shores of the Unhav, the wide lake that the city people of Nabban called by a name in their own language, Eadne. The grasslander riders knew this northernmost part of the Varn well: In spring and summer the people of the Thrithings hunted here for birds and fish and otters (whose pelts the stone-dwellers prized and paid for handsomely), so the grasslanders had learned the safe ways through this treacherous, trackless landscape while they had still been children.

“Why do the city men even come to live here?” Fremur asked. “They are not like us or even the Varnamen. They will be eaten by crocodiles or ghants. They will stumble off the safe tracks and drown.”

“Only a few of them,” said Unver. “Then the rest will drain the Varn and build farms.”

Fremur hoped that wasn’t true, but he had learned long ago not to argue with Unver. The tall, quiet man did not say much, but what he said was usually correct.

“Impossible,” said Odrig, Fremur’s brother, who was the thane of their clan even though their father still lived. “Only a coward would believe that stone-dwellers could take our land. We will push them into the ocean.”

“Only a coward or a fool,” said Drojan, looking to Odrig for approval.

Unver did not say anything, and his hawk-nosed face remained impassive, but Fremur could almost feel the man’s anger tighten, like the stretching of a bowstring. Unver thumped his heels against his horse’s ribs and rode a little way ahead, picking his way through the tufts of reeds and the muddy pools on ancient tracks that would disappear again with the first rains of autumn.

“Fool,” said Drojan again, but not as loudly as he might have. Like Odrig, Drojan was barrel-chested and strong, but though Odrig might be as tall as Unver, Drojan was a head shorter and a great deal slower. If Drojan had not been Thane Odrig’s friend and lackey since childhood, Fremur felt sure he would not be insulting Unver so freely.

Odrig laughed. “No need to pick fights,” he said. “There will be blood to spill soon enough.”

Fremur was not entirely certain himself how he felt about Unver. The tall man was no one’s friend, and he had made it clear many times that he thought Fremur little more admirable than his elder brother Odrig. Still, there was something about pale-skinned Unver that Fremur could not ignore, some quality of purposeful reserve, of unusual thoughts unshared. Old beyond his three decades, uninterested in boasts or contests or drinking until he staggered, Unver was simply not like the other Thrithings-men.

If Fremur was uncertain of his feelings about Unver, he was in no doubt how he felt about his brother Odrig, the thane: he hated him. Odrig was one of the largest, fiercest men in the Crane Clan. He had acted like its leader since he was a youth, but when their father Hurvalt had been god-struck seven summers earlier, Odrig had inherited the clan’s bones and banner in fact as well as in his own estimation. Hurvalt still lived, but the old thane was now little more than a simpleton. Odrig had ruled the family since that moment, and had made that hard old man, their father, seem like a soft, soft woman. Fremur was no coward, and in a different clan he might have thrived, but his older brother treated him like a child.

No, he thought. Not like a child. Like a dog. Kick me when he pleases and throw me a bone if it suits him. If he were not my brother and my thane, if he were simply another clansman, I would have put a knife in him years ago.

Sometimes Fremur thought of simply leaving the Crane Clan for another—the Fitches or Kestrels, or even the Antelopes up in the Meadow Thrithing, whom he had seen once at a gathering and admired for their tall, handsome women. Sometimes he even thought it would be better to wander unhomed and without a clan than to continue putting up with Odrig’s abuse, but he could not leave their sister Kulva to suffer alone.

It seemed strange to hate his own flesh and blood so, but time and again Odrig Stonefist had proved himself worth hating.

•   •   •

They rode swiftly through the hills that hemmed the marshy lowlands, but paused before descending into the wide valley. The settlement stretching before them was mostly dark, but here and there a torch burned along the wooden stockade, and Fremur thought he could see movement above the gate. Unver, as usual, rode a little way apart from the others, bent low over the saddle and wrapped in his long, dark cloak so that it was hard to tell by moonlight where horse ended and rider began.

Odrig reined up and scanned the wall. Inside lay the paddocks where the settlers’ cattle and sheep were kept, along with the greatest prize of all, their horses. The stone-dweller’s beasts might not compare to Thrithings-steeds, but they were still useful for crossbreeding, and even more useful for selling to Varnamen and others who could not afford the prices at Nabbanai horse markets.

Odrig stood high in his stirrups, scanning the darkness. Much as he loathed him, Fremur had to admit his brother had the look of a proper grasslands thane. Odrig had taken a wife, as a thane should, and had long ago grown out his man’s beard. Unver and Drojan, despite being more or less the same age, still had the long mustaches and smooth chins of unmarried men, while Fremur’s own mustaches did not even reach the bottom of his jaw.

“Where are Tunzdan and his damned cousins?” Odrig growled, but a moment later a nightjar’s call echoed three times from the nearest hill. “There. Good.” He bared his teeth in a grin. “Now we wait for Bordelm to start the celebration.” He looked to Unver. “If this plan of yours doesn’t work, be sure I’ll leave you behind to be skinned by the city-men.”