“They will show us the way, and take us there. Their warriors will accompany us…look to the horizon.”
They looked, and there were hundreds of the shaggy white creatures, mere outlines in the snow, on the horizon.
Chapter Seventy-Three
The Terythyrians were tireless. Renir had been bounced and jounced all the way across the land, through plains, leaping across rends in the ground and ice, across rocky escarpments and around ravines where water had once run free. He had picked up some simple hand signals from Drun, but despaired of ever learning more — the language was complex and largely incomprehensible.
The Terythyrians knew of the wizard they hunted, too. He wondered at their history. He longed to know from where their kind hailed, what secrets they knew. From what he could gather their race was ancient, but they would not tell more. They would not say how they knew of the wizard. But if the wizard was a creature of myth, their memories must be long indeed to remember so far into the past.
“Some things are not meant for the knowing,” the voice in his head told him sternly. It was an ever present companion. Sometimes he wished for the loneliness of his own thoughts again, but she was now warm, where once she had seemed a harridan. He was beginning to understand that there had always been a purpose.
He had a purpose. He marvelled at it. For so long on this journey he had thought himself just a part, a small cog in a great wheel. Now it turned out he had a fate. No longer blown, he would forge his own path. How, he did not know, but he was learning all the time.
Now he watched his companions with new eyes. He watched their new allies in awe since his awakening. There was so much to learn. And learn, and grow, he must.
As the week past, the voice in his head spoke to him. He grew to love her a little, even if he did feel fear at the prospect of his own, personal quest. So much to do.
But he was committed on a course. His blood called to him. His land called to him. Suddenly he was aware of how much he missed Sturma, how much he loved the land he grew in, and how it took for him to leave that land to learn his destiny, his future, and the power of his blood.
He would be forged on foreign plains. He had to know of the world. That was his lot. To bring his land together, to hold strong. There would be a future. When the wizard awoke, it would not be the end, but a new beginning.
So he watched, and he listened. He learned much in that week. When he spoke, he learned to do so within his head. Drun questioned him, but he was not ready to share yet. He bounced, he rode the Terythyr’s back, he followed.
When the time came, the voice told him, following was a good lesson. One had to know how to follow in order to lead.
The immensity of it humbled him. One must know how to be humble to recognise hubris, the voice warned him, and he listened. On the way he discovered something else amazing. He knew love. He loved the voice, in a way he never had in life. Without the bonds of flesh binding her, and his eyes, understanding blossomed, and love grew. If only, he mused in a secret part of his mind, his wife had been so forgiving when she had been flesh and blood.
Chapter Seventy-Four
The mountain was falling down. The ground shook under his feet, and Klan, for all his power, could not stop it. An avalanche of rock had fallen to ground in the last quake, tumbling down the side of the mountain like a flowing river, some boulders as large as a man, snows in great waves pushing the rock forward.
He fumed in peace. He had lost base camp. Not a trace of them remained. Yet he could not take out his frustration on a mountain. Even he could not move the earth, bring back life, or hold back an avalanche. So he fumed in peace, his eyes leaking red light, but he could control himself to a greater degree now. He no longer lost his temper, or killed in a fit of pique.
Instead he willed himself calm, blinked and closed his eyes. The messenger before him was not quaking, but Klan read fear in his face, in the set of his shoulders. But he would not burn him. He recognised that the soldier was no more at fault than himself.
Oh, but he longed to lash out with his ascendants power, to burn the soldier to a crisp, to drink in his pain, fuelling greater feats, to burn all his men and raze the mountains flat, melt the ice and set the world on fire…but that was the blight talking. Klan could control it. It was his power, his to wield. He would not be a tool for the blight. He could not afford a lapse. He had already lost a hundred men to the shaking mountains and the quaking lands.
Perhaps the land quaked from fear of him?
He permitted himself a small smile. The soldier, misinterpreting that smile, began to sweat, despite the frigid air in the tent. Klan needed no heat. He burned with an inner fire.
“Leave me,” he said, and closed his eyes lest the sight of the soldier infuriated him beyond control.
He just needed some time alone. Some time to calm himself. The tent glowed red. He breathed deeply and pushed himself inside. Searching, searching the bone archive, as he often did. He found comfort, a kind of peace in the hard letters scorched onto his skeleton. The flowing words calmed him, the hunt, a hunt for knowledge. Somehow it soothed him. He did not know why. Mostly he found himself soothed by taking life, by striping a face from bone, or staring at his delegation in his quarters in Arram.
Every thinking being needed a break from their work.
The ground rumbled beneath its covering of ice, but it did not bother Klan. He was insensible to the going on of the world for a moment in time.
Blinking, the light extinguished itself, and he returned to the real world, but an instant spend with his bone archive, and he felt refreshed.
He poked his head out into the sunshine and called an aid to him.
“Take note, Iryal, I wish a new base camp set one mile from the site of the avalanche. It is the centre of the disturbance. I feel we will find our goal there before long. See to it.”
“Yes, Anamnesor.” The aid bowed and left quickly to execute his orders before Klan could change his mind. Their leader was somewhat unstable. All his soldiers realised this, but the honour of serving the new division was all they thought of. It was their lot to serve. They were soldiers. He was the Anamnesor, riding high among the Speculate. He was ascendant. It was more than most of them could ever hope for.
Klan turned his attention back inside, and researched what he could find of quakes, and fire mountains. He set himself a goal. By tonight he would be in place. He would find the mountain. Already he knew that it would be the centre of the disturbances. He spared a moment to wonder where his adversaries were. He had not heard from his outriders. In a moment, he would travel there and see what was happening. He could commune, but he felt he needed a personal touch.
Periodic rumbles came while he searched. The quakes were becoming more frequent. The ice was shaking itself apart.
Had he spared the time to look, Klan, with his powerful eyes, might have discerned the mountain peak above him slowly growing, pulsing, like a beating heart.
Chapter Seventy-Five
The snow cleared overnight, and they woke to a brilliant clear sky, a pristine blue. Early morning sun glinted lazily on the fresh snow. Drun woke first, and his eyes smiled at the sight. For a Sard, bathing in sunlight, even a
