glacier while the high sun sparkled on ice.
Sunbright saw all this and wondered. Was it real? Were these things true, and happening right now? Or did he merely imagine them? If all these events were true, then a human family would be slaughtered by marauding orcs along the Nauseef Flow, and that ram would starve to death in the icy crevasse. Yet he could do nothing about either threat. Visions could be a curse, he was learning.
But if the visions were not true, then did this dream mean anything, or were the images as worthless as marsh gas bubbling up in his brain? And why did he fly? Where was he bound?
Black flickered at the edge of his imagination. A black with a sheen of purple. A raven's wing. He flew as a raven, totem of his clan. Perhaps this was a true vision! Or perhaps it was just more brain-gas. Either way, he gave in and trusted the totem. He watched, and waited for truth, for falsehood, or for nothing at all.
Wings canted and the world banked from horizon to horizon. Sunbright's stomach lurched. The Channel Mountains passed underneath, then the floating enclave of Quagmire, then a grove of drooping birches along the Watercourse where he'd once stood with Knucklebones. The Watercourse was placid in late summer, still and empty, idly rippling instead of roaring as in spring when the tribes gathered to fish salmon. Then the river fell behind, a silver trickle near Sunbright's raven tail.
All was vaguely familiar, for the land turned to rolling grasslands dotted with horses, antelope, and deer. In a hollow between hills a mother mammoth and two yearlings lolled away the afternoon heat, their shaggy hair clotted with old mud and manure. More mammoths swayed and sauntered to the south, yanking up whole bushes with clever trunks and cramming them in their mouths. From a hill, a lone saber-toothed tiger crouched, only ear and eyes showing. Even flies settling on its rump couldn't elicit a twitch.
Sunbright knew this scene from his childhood, for once a year the tundra barbarians crossed the Narrow Sea and met their southern cousins to fish and fight and joke and carouse and flirt. But of these southern folk, the clans of Tortoise and Saber-Tooth and Hellbender, he saw no sign. No one in the tribe knew where they were, another link to the past gone missing.
The phantom raven flapped on. Or perhaps it was a real bird, and Sunbright only saw through its eyes. Gray lumps in the distance rolled higher to form the Barren Mountains, with the dense High Forest at their feet. Yellow grasslands met gray mountains, met green forest. The whole world was laid out like Jannath's Quilt. The shaman wondered about his destination, if any.
Then the picture turned half over, and he stared straight down. At the crux of three lands, grass, mountains and forest, stood the last mountain, Sanguine Mountain, so called because it bled red rust from a deep crevice in the rainy season. The phantom raven dived straight for the bloody crevice, until red-shot blackness filled his vision.
Faster they flew, and faster, until the world blurred and wind sizzled in the man's eyes and made them water. Gasping, mewling, pleading, he urged the bird to rise, to bank, to shy away, but the linked visionaries bored through air like an arrow. Soon only black loomed. Sunbright heard wind along a rocky ridge. There was no escape.
They struck, smashing in a bloody gobbet of feathers on granite.
'Unnnhhh…' Sunbright teetered and fell. He banged his shoulder, felt the world roll away, as if swept in an avalanche, then tumbled on his face, tearing skin off his forehead. Frantically, he clawed for a hold, broke fingernails on stone.
Something caught his waist, his leg, his arm. Strong hands like iron, but small, cool, and capable. He stopped falling.
Shivering, sweating, Sunbright opened his eyes, was stabbed by sunlight. Something blocked the sun. A hand. Knucklebones's.
'Are you all right? You were sitting on that mound, still as death, then you started groaning. I couldn't catch you before you fell,' she said. 'You're bleeding!'
Gently, the elf-woman eased him onto his back. She ran for a blanket, and wrapped him snugly to stop his shaking. From a canteen she tilted water on his face, wiped away sweat and blood.
Sunbright craned his head to see, to orient himself. Oh, yes. They were six or seven miles south of the village, in the worst of the wasteland. Three days ago Sunbright had drunk his last sip of water, eaten the last scrap of meat, and mounted a low mound that gave a view in all directions. Then he'd lowered his head, and prayed, and waited, while Knucklebones patiently tended camp and potted rats with a sling. Then, after three days of broiling in the sun and shivering by night, a vision had come.
'I know-I know where we're to go.' Sunbright creaked. He could barely speak, for his tongue was swollen from thirst. Knucklebones cooed and trickled water in his mouth. But his thirst for knowledge was greater. 'Sanguine Mountain, with a cleft like blood, where the grasslands end, and rise to mountain and forest.'
'And what will we find there?' she asked, bandaging the scrape on his forehead.
'I've no idea,' he rasped, then accepted more water. 'It's the place. A raven showed me. Our fate lies there.'
Knucklebones frowned, blew out her cheeks, combed his hair with her fingers, and said, 'I believe you. I just hope you can convince the tribe.'
Rengarth Barbarians were never easily convinced.
They argued for days until the shaky rafters of the common house rang. Smoke from sacred pipes was blown back and forth by shouts, accusations of cowardice and betrayal, threats and challenges, fistfights, scoldings, tears, pleas… Talk went in circles and off on tangents. Stories were recounted and corrected. Prayers were offered.
Time and again, the argument came down to someone shouting, 'We must go because we can't stay here! To live on foreign soil will be the death of our tribe!'
'All right,' bellowed Magichunger, the loudest, 'but why go the path Sunbright suggests? He's not a real shaman! He knows nothing! The gods wouldn't speak to him. We might as well follow a blind mole as go his route.'
An angry chorus shouted him down while others agreed. More shouting went on outside where the walls of the common house had been removed. Anyone who'd killed an enemy or born a child could speak in council, and over three hundred barbarians gathered every night. Someone snatched the speaking stick from Magichunger and thrust it into Sunbright's hands.
'Tell them again!'
Reluctantly, Sunbright held up the speaking stick, just a plain stick with a skunk's skull atop. Yet when raised, only the wielder could speak. As if by magic, the council hushed. Sunbright suppressed a sigh. 'I don't claim special knowledge,' hie said evenly, 'but I made a vision quest, asking the gods for a destination. I was rewarded with a dream of Sanguine Mountain. The message-from the gods, not me-is clear. We should go there.' He lowered the stick as if it were suddenly too heavy.
Someone amended, 'And we can't stay here!'
'But how do we know?' someone hollered, and the wrangling ran around the circle again.
Sunbright slumped on the floor of the hut. Cross-legged, his knees toasted at the council fire, yet toes dug his kidneys. The room was packed, and steamy as a sauna with charged bodies. Knucklebones, who'd been silent for days, took his hand to rest on her knee. 'How much longer will this go on?' she asked quietly.
'Forever, I fear,' sighed the shaman. 'You can't believe how hardheaded barbarians can be. My people don't remove rock slides from a trail, they just lower their heads and bash through.'
'I believe it, but tell me…' the thief said, more loudly now because of the noise. '… that blood oath that Thornwing started that night. Most of the tribe swore with her, right? But what did they swear to do?'
'Hunh?' Sunbright grunted, rubbed his burning eyes, and cudgeled his brain. 'Umm… They swore to… follow me if I were driven from the tribe.'
'Then go.'
Sunbright peered at her stupidly, as if she'd spoken a foreign tongue.
'Go.' Her hand made a pushing motion. 'Say you're packing and leaving tomorrow, and going to Sanguine Mountain. The ones who swore the oath must follow, mustn't they?'
The shaman juggled the new idea in his head: he had as much trouble accepting new customs as anyone. 'They only swore that if I were driven out…'
'Driven out, walk out, there's little difference,' Knucklebones said as she nudged him to his feet. 'Just say it.
