‘And, had they been in truth Pure Kin, then…’
‘They would not have died so easily.’
‘Thus.’
‘He betrayed you, brother.’
‘He betrayed us all.’
There was silence.
‘He betrayed us all, did he not, brothers?’
‘Yes.’ The word arrived rough, beneath the breath, mumbled-a chorus of dubious uncertainty.
No-one spoke for a long moment, then, savage with barely bridled anger: ‘Thus,
‘He is gone.’
‘He never existed.’
‘He never existed.’
‘Let us leave this place, then.’
‘Yes, let us leave.’
Trull Sengar listened until he could no more hear their boots on the stones, nor feel the tremble of their dwindling steps. He was alone, unable to move, seeing only the mud-smeared stone at the base of the iron ring.
The sea rustled the corpses along the shoreline. Crabs scuttled. Water continued to seep through the mortar, insinuate the Cyclopean wall with the voice of muttering ghosts, and flow down on the other side.
Among his people, it was a long-known truth, perhaps the only truth, that Nature fought but one eternal war. One foe. That, further, to understand this was to understand the world. Every world.
The wall held the sea.
This was a flood that would not be denied. The deluge had but just begun-something his brothers could not understand, would, perhaps, never understand.
Drowning was common among his people. Drowning was not feared. And so, Trull Sengar would drown. Soon.
And before long, he suspected, his entire people would join him. His brother had shattered the balance.
Book One
The slower the river, the redder it runs
CHAPTER ONE
Children from a dark house choose shadowed paths .
THE DOG HAD SAVAGED A WOMAN, AN OLD MAN AND A CHILD BEFORE the warriors drove it into an abandoned kiln at the edge of the village. The beast had never before displayed an uncertain loyalty. It had guarded the Uryd lands with fierce zeal, one with its kin in its harsh, but just, duties. There were no wounds on its body that might have festered and so allowed the spirit of madness into its veins. Nor was the dog possessed by the foaming sickness. Its position in the village pack had not been challenged. Indeed, there was nothing, nothing at all, to give cause to the sudden turn.
The warriors pinned the animal to the rounded back wall of the clay kiln with spears, stabbing at the snapping, shrieking beast until it was dead. When they withdrew their spears they saw the shafts chewed and slick with spit and blood; they saw iron dented and scored.
Madness, they knew, could remain hidden, buried far beneath the surface, a subtle flavour turning blood into something bitter. The shamans examined the three victims; two had already died of their wounds, but the child still clung to life.
In solemn procession he was carried by his father to the Faces in the Rock, laid down in the glade before the Seven Gods of the Teblor, and left there.
He died a short while later. Alone in his pain before the hard visages carved into the cliff-face.
This was not an unexpected fate. The child, after all, had been too young to pray.
All of this, of course, happened centuries past. Long before the Seven Gods opened their eyes.
Urugal the Woven’s Year 1159 Burn’s Sleep
They were glorious tales. Farms in flames, children dragged behind horses for leagues. The trophies of that day, so long ago, cluttered the low walls of his grandfather’s longhouse. Scarred skull-pates, frail-looking mandibles. Odd fragments of clothing made of some unknown material, now smoke-blackened and tattered. Small ears nailed to every wooden post that reached up to the thatched roof.
Evidence that Silver Lake was real, that it existed in truth, beyond the forest-clad mountains, down through hidden passes, a week-perhaps two-distant from the lands of the Uryd clan. The way itself was fraught, passing through territories held by the Sunyd and Rathyd clans, a journey that was itself a tale of legendary proportions. Moving silent and unseen through enemy camps, shifting the hearthstones to deliver deepest insult, eluding the hunters and trackers day and night until the borderlands were reached, then crossed-the vista ahead unknown, its riches not even yet dreamed of.
Karsa Orlong lived and breathed his grandfather’s tales. They stood like a legion, defiant and fierce, before the pallid, empty legacy of Synyg-Pahlk’s son and Karsa’s father. Synyg, who had done nothing in his life, who tended his horses in his valley and had not once ventured into hostile lands. Synyg, who was both his father’s and his son’s greatest shame.
True, Synyg had more than once defended his herd of horses from raiders from other clans, and defended well, with honourable ferocity and admirable skill. But this was only to be expected from those of Uryd blood. Urugal the Woven was the clan’s Face in the Rock, and Urugal was counted among the fiercest of the seven gods. The other clans had reason to fear the Uryd.
Nor had Synyg proved less than masterful in training his only son in the Fighting Dances. Karsa’s skill with the bloodwood blade far surpassed his years. He was counted among the finest warriors of the clan. While the Uryd disdained use of the bow, they excelled with spear and atlatl, with the toothed-disc and the black-rope, and Synyg had taught his son an impressive efficiency with these weapons as well.
None the less, such training was to be expected from any father in the Uryd clan. Karsa could find no reason for pride in such things. The Fighting Dances were but preparation, after all. Glory was found in all that followed, in
