A short distance away, beside the big stone, they found Kemme and Saomeji in the middle of a circle of bearded corpses. Kemme was wounded in a dozen places but was already sitting up, tightening his belt around his arm to staunch the blood from the worst of his wounds. The Singer lay motionless a short distance away. He seemed unharmed as far as Nezeru could see, and even when she turned him over she could find no blood, but he was utterly insensible and limp as a rag, as though he had fallen asleep in the middle of the life and death struggle.

“What happened here?” she wondered aloud. “What did these mortals want?”

Jarnulf bent over one of the corpses and cut something free, then held it up—a wedge-shaped piece of iron dangling on a leather cord. “Do you see this?” He shook the heavy medallion. “Hovnir, the Ax of Udun Rimmer, the old god of my people. These are Skalijar, as I guessed.”

“But why should they hunt us?”

Jarnulf shrugged. “We are bound for Urmsheim. There is a place there called the Uduntree, sacred to the old gods of the Rimmersfolk. I told you, they think your people demons. They wanted to keep us off their sacred ground.”

“A foolish reason to die.” She turned back to examining Saomeji.

“Do you know any better ones?” Jarnulf asked, but before she could even wonder what such a strange thing meant, he let out a low whistle of surprise. When she turned to see what had startled him, she saw he had lifted up another corpse. It was really only half a corpse, though, since everything from the shoulders up was gone, leaving only a smoking tatter of burnt furs and blackened flesh pierced by jagged bits of bone. “By God, what happened to this one?” Jarnulf said, his eyes wide. For the first time since the fighting had begun, she saw real fear on his face.

“The Singer did that,” said Kemme, getting unevenly to his feet. “A pretty trick of his I did not have much chance to watch. Something to do with stones. He killed several that way before he fell down like that.”

“We must get him and Makho to shelter,” said Nezeru.

Kemme stared at her, blood smeared across his hawklike face. “Until Makho can speak for himself, only I give orders, halfblood.” He pointed at Saomeji. “You two take the Singer, I will carry Makho.”

Jarnulf was looking around. “Where is the giant? I don’t see him.”

Kemme’s mouth began to curl into a sneer until he grasped the meaning of what Jarnulf had said. Then, with a snarl of frustration, he fell to his knees and plucked at Makho’s belt until he found the pouch that held the crystal rod. He stood up, holding it, and cupped one hand to his mouth.

“Giant! Where are you? Come to me now, or I will choke you and roast your heart. Do you feel your collar?” He held the rod near his lips, whispered something—Nezeru thought she heard a low murmur of song. An instant later, a terrible bellow of pain and fury rose from the slope below.

“Curse you!” came Goh Gam Gar’s booming voice. “I am trapped under stones down here! If you do that to me again, I will dig through the very mountain itself to rip your head off!”

Kemme laughed harshly. He whispered to the rod again, and was rewarded with another ground-shaking bellow from the giant. “Well, I suppose we should dig him out,” he said at last. “Then he can carry the other two to shelter.”

•   •   •

It was strange to sit around a fire as mortals did, but when Saomeji had recovered enough to speak he had begged them to light one. Now he huddled beside it, as weak as if he had just survived a terrible fever. The smoke drifted up and out of the shallow cavern to be shredded by the mounting wind.

“A trick, of sorts,” he said when Jarnulf asked him about the burned corpses. “It was a piece of luck we were surrounded by the right kind of stones. Most will not hold so much heat long enough.”

“Long enough for what?”

“Long enough to throw them before they burst.” He shook his head and inched a bit closer to the flames. “I sang fire into them until they grew hot, then threw them.” He lifted his right hand. The skin was terribly red and blistered. “But it is hard to bring so much force to bear so quickly. I am exhausted. I am sure I will sleep as if I were a child again.”

•   •   •

Later, while they were out gathering more wood, a task that Nezeru had never performed before, she found herself near Jarnulf while Kemme, the other member of the expedition, was a good distance away.

“So those were Skalijar,” she said. “Will we meet more of them?”

Jarnulf banged a log against a tree, knocking snow from it. “I doubt it. They waited until they felt it was the best time to attack, when the giant was not with us. That was more than two score men that we killed. If there had been more, they would have already made themselves known.”

“But why? Why would they attack us? You said they believe us demons. Why would they take such a risk?”

“You do not understand mortals, Sacrifice, even if you are half a mortal yourself. We do not always do what makes sense. Especially when we are driven by fear or rage.”

“They were so afraid of us that they attacked us?”

“They were afraid of us doing what we are going to do—climb Urmsheim, their sacred mountain. And they believed they could prevent us because their gods wanted it so—that with the gods’ help, they could defeat demons. That is their story. That is the tale that gives their lives sense.”

“So you are saying that they were foolish, like children.”

Jarnulf added a new log to his pile, then stepped back and looked at her squarely. “I am saying that all living things that think have a story, something that makes sense out of the howling chaos into which they are born. You should know, Nezeru of the Order of Sacrifice. Your people would have curled up and died long ago if you did not cling to the story of the Garden and of your undying queen. You believe that she will lead you back to happiness again, just as in those long-ago days, and so you endure terrible hardships, dreadful wars. You do not even protest the fact that you will likely not be alive to see that happiness if it ever comes.”

For a moment, Nezeru could not understand him. “But you know that is not a mere story. The Garden, the queen—it is all true!”

Jarnulf’s face was again carefully emotionless. “If you say so.”

“But she is your queen, too! Are you not her huntsman—her slave-taker? Do you not labor in her service?” Frightened that they had reached such strange territory of thought, she looked around for Kemme, but he was still high up the slope.

“I have my own story. Being a servant of the Queen of the Hikeda’ya does not command my thoughts as well. Even you could think differently if you chose.”

“That is treason!”

“If you say so.”

“How do you know I will not go to Kemme or Makho and tell them what you say?”

“I don’t. Is that part of your story? That when somebody’s words make you frightened, you must see that one destroyed?”

Nezeru had never experienced anything like this and did not know how to think about it. His ideas were worse than treasonous, they were terrifying. They turned the world upside down. But at the same time, as though she had been pushed from a great height, she also felt a moment of wild freedom simply contemplating such things. It frightened her, but she was not ready to flee from it. “You are a very strange, very dangerous man.”

“You could not even guess.”

She watched him as he continued his search for wood, as calm as if he had not just called the Mother of All a liar and the Garden a foolish dream. “How can you live without a story, mortal? How could anyone live that way?”

“You’d be surprised. And I never said I didn’t have a story of my own. When you meet someone who has lost his story, then you will see someone who is truly dangerous.” He surveyed his stack of logs and broken branches. “Perhaps it is time for us to go back. I cannot carry more than this.”