“See? You already know your grandfather. Great deeds live on, even after Giants and Men die.”
“What was he like?” Vireon persisted. “Did he laugh? Or was he dour like you?”
Fangodrim considered the question. “He… did laugh. When he was with your grandmother. She made him very happy. I never… I never understood it. To me, one woman is as good as the next. But Fangodrel had eyes only for Oidah. When your father was born, it was the happiest day of his life. He laughed and held the baby high so the sun would kiss him. Those were peaceful days. Our city was strong and our numbers were great. Now… now we dwindle.”
Vireon shifted his weight to lie on his side and look into his uncle’s gnarled face. “Is it true that my father was the last baby born to the Uduru?”
Fangodrim nodded. A cold wind blew through the valley and yellow Uyga leaves fell about the glade, one of them landing across the Giant’s outstretched leg. He took the leaf in his great hand, cradling it gingerly. “Now our people fade. Like this tree shedding its leaves, the earth sheds Uduru. There are so few of us left, and we grow old.” He crumpled the leaf to saffron dust in his hand. “It is the autumn of our kind, and winter will be upon us before we realize it.”
“Still I wonder why,” Vireon said. “Why can’t the Uduri bear children anymore?”
Fangodrim opened his hand. The wind caught his leaf dust, spilling it across the ground.
“It is the Curse of Omagh.”
“The Serpent-Father?”
“Your father slew him and rebuilt Udurum, but he could not destroy the evil spirit that dwelled within the beast. It is this power that keeps our women barren.”
“Another curse?” Vireon frowned. “Father said the Mer-Queen cursed him. Is there no end to curses? Nothing that can be done?”
The corners of Fangodrim’s mouth rose to wrinkle his eyes. “ You are the end to Omagh’s Curse… you and Tadarus.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You and Tadarus… you are the link between Uduru and Men. You are something entirely new. Something great. A new breed for this world. Your children will be mighty Killn U one day, a new race that will spread across the kingdoms of the earth. It all begins anew with you.”
Vireon never thought of having children. He had lain with many girls, many women, but his seed had never taken. If his uncle spoke truly, then the responsibility to have many children lay upon his shoulders, and that of his brother.
A new scent, moist and green, came to his nose. His true love, the forest, once again seducing him. It was the smell of rain. A gentle shower began to fall and the sun fell behind a bank of gray clouds. Vireon studied the bowl of the sky. This would not be a great storm, only a passing wash. The lake danced with ripples, its silver mirror illusion broken. He stood upon the Uyga root and dove into the chill waters.
Gliding through the murky depths, he passed shoals of rainbow-scaled fish and skimmed a forest of dark waterweed, an aqueous wonderland that mimicked the wood outside the lake. What secrets lay buried in the sediment among those drowned roots? That was the world, he supposed. Secrets within secrets within secrets.
He emerged on the far side of the lake, stepping out to sun himself on the green bank. Looking back, he saw Fangodrim dozing now under the Uyga’s rustling canopy. The rain shower had already faded to a drizzle, and the sun hurled a rainbow across the eastern sky. Vireon watched it in quiet wonder, airy strings of jewels like a new crown for his love, arcing gracefully over the gigantic trees. The air, stunned by the wet glow of the sun, took on a golden quality, and nature shimmered like a glassy vision.
Suddenly a flash of purest white caught Vireon’s eye. He turned his head and found himself staring at a curious creature. Some distance away from the lake a pale-furred thing crouched atop a green boulder, staring at him with narrow black eyes. It blinked once, and he realized it was a fox. Twice as large as a normal fox, larger than a wolf, with a regal tail swishing low behind its lean body. He stared, and the white fox did not move.
“Vireon?” Fangodrim’s voice rolled across the water. A second time he called out, but Vireon did not answer. He was staring at the fox, unable to turn away, knowing it would disappear like a dissolving dream if he did so.
A third time and Fangodrim’s voice broke his reverie. He turned and shouted across the lake. “Uncle! I see a white fox!”
Fangodrim rose to his feet and his voice boomed. “It is only a dream,” he yelled. “Many of us have seen it. We call it the Wyrial, the ghost dancer. You must ignore it! Swim back to this side.”
Vireon looked back and the fox was gone. The flip of a white tail dove into the shadows of the trees. He ran after it.
Fangodrim shouted after him. “Vireon, no! Do not chase the Wyrial! It’s only a vision! Come back!”
The Giant’s voice echoed across the valley, but Vireon was gone.
“Vireon!” he shouted, standing between the carcasses of the two cleaned Welka bucks. Their dead eyes stared blankly at nothing. “Vireon, come back!”
It was too late. The chase had begun.
Vireon ran, and the forest became a blur of green, brown, and gold. He leaped over narrow ravines, fallen branches big as logs, and piles of mossy boulders. The white fox glided between the trees like a low-flying bird, a pale shadow with the speed of a winter wind. Hours he ran after it without tiring, until the sun sank low in the sky and darkness flooded the forest. Now the fox gleamed silver in the moonlight, sometimes stopping to look back at him with its dark, almond-shaped eyes, pink tongue lolling. Then it was running again, a gleam of white threading the hem of night’s dense cloak.
The sinking of the sun on his left told Vireon the fox was heading north, probably well beyond the realm of the Giants’ hunting ground. How far north did the great forest extend? He had no idea. It might stretch all the way into the frozen wastes at the top of the world. He put such matters aside, reveling in the joy of the run, the thrill of the chase. His spear had been left behind with his uncle, but he had his knife of Uduru steel. All he would need to skin the fox’s pearly coat when he caught it. Such a fine pelt it would be, a raiment fit for any Prince.
The last of the day’s lingering warmth faded from the forest, and his breaths came in gusts of white fog. He lost sight of the running fox every now and then, but he already had caught its smell. It was unlike any animal odor. A cloying mix of jasmine, rose petals, and raw green earth. More like a woman’s smell than a beast’s. It incensed him in some primal way, and he pushed himself faster, running on across moonlit valleys, splashing through creeks foamy with whitewater, launching himself up the sides of fallen Uyga trunks and leaping wolf-like to the earth on the other side. The ground grew rougher and a range of wooded hills rose about him. Still the white fox led him on by sight and smell and sheer audacity. His hunter’s pride hung in the balance. No beast could escape a Prince of Udurum.
He ran on through the depths of night, along pitch-dark hollows where moonlight could not reach, across bony hilltops bright with legions of spreading moonflowers. He barely noticed when the rain returned, this time falling hard and cold against his skin. He ran through the rising wind and the whirling storm; the damp only made the fox’s scent stronger. Just before dawn the rain turned to sleet, and the ground became slick with gray slush. He fell once, sliding down a hill on his backside and slamming into a tree bole, but he was up and running again even before catching his breath. The icy rain washed him clean as he ran.
In the cold glare of sunrise, he saw the fox mount a hill no more than a spear’s cast away. He stopped dead in his tracks, blinking at it. Atop the rise now stood a gorgeous young woman, barefoot on the frosty ground. Long hair fell bright as sunlight about her naked body, and she glowered at him down the hillside. Vireon held his breath. Her narrow eyes were dark as night, just like the fox. Her flesh was pale, the alabaster of a nocturnal being, the inhuman beauty of an airy spirit. The falling sleet turned to snow in that instant, and black clouds swallowed the early sun. The white fox raced down the hill’s far side.
Vireon followed, snowflakes steaming against his hot skin. He ran through the frosty morning, ignorant of the cold. Shirtless he had come into the forest, and his buckskin leggings and boots were soaked with the night’s rain. His slick black mane swirled behind his head as he crowned the hill and sprinted down its back. The white fox already mounted another hill up ahead. A thin lay Kd. night’er of snow had covered the autumn colors of the forest floor. The Uyga still grew here, but there were many other, smaller varieties of tree. The undergrowth was thicker here, and often he jumped a cluster of white-leaf fern or a knot of tall skyweed. He ran north, into the cold lands where summer only ever visited briefly before fleeing southward.
