Shock more than anything made Našobok release his hold. “Madoc, what i—?”
“It’s all your fault!” Madoc rounded on him. “Everything was fine—fine, I tell you!—until you came here and… and…!”
Then Madoc spat on the ground not a hand away from Našobok’s boot, turned on one heel and marched towards the compound.
Našobok watched him go. Was it even possible that the entirety a’Naišwyrh had gone completely mad?
Ai, better he head for home, board his ship and never look back, because every time he did involve himself, even in the slightest, with some aspect of his birthing-tribe, it inevitably meant stepping in a pit of sleeping viperKin.
“I’d better go find Tokela,” Našobok finally said.
TOKELA RAN.
Again.
His feet knew where he was going even before he did. Up and past the drum heights, through the trees along the cliffside and away from the Great Mound, towards the trebled Moons rising, peeping from behind high-hung clouds and ghosting against Sky.
The hareKin mask bumped and scraped at his hip.
Drums and voices muted in the dense green, with only an occasional call or lift of bass beat. Dance and Fire left behind, cordoned by thick woodland, only the rush and burble of the Riverling’s overflow, only the rustle and hiss of leaves in Wind’s breath to fill the quiet.
Tokela needed the stillness. Needed something to quiet the twitching, humming, surging thing lighting behind his eyes, as if burning to cinders the drum that would let him move, Dance, breathe.
Instead of growing, the Riverling dwindled beside him, and the trees thinned. His steps slowed, from run to stumbling half trot, and he blinked, somehow surprised at where he’d come.
Surely he’d meant to go to the wykupeh.
If you didn’t want me to find you, then you came to the wrong place. The memory of Madoc’s words informed him: maybe he hadn’t meant to go there, after all.
But to come here?
Tokela approached the t’rešalt, one foot before the other, silent, the pit of his stomach roiling with the weight of dread and a strange, rogue tickle of… anticipation? The Riverling teased him, burbling as She disappeared into Earth, as if all things fell silent before the thing looming before him.
It too was quiet. Dark. Had he misremembered? Imagined the sparks and shards of light chasing across its surface?
But as he moved closer, the t’rešalt started to hum and spark. Slow at first, then faster the closer he came; as if his presence nudged it, somehow. The lights flickered soft, this time seeming more welcome than warning…
No matter. He should leave.
Instead Tokela hesitated, then crept closer and extended a cautious hand towards the thing.
Smooth, his fingers registered. Moreso than the finest-sanded wood, slick, almost, and…
Tokela yipped and yanked his hand back just as the thing lit up with tiny, feathery bits of SkyFire, all arcing towards his fingers. A jolt thumped his calf, where his knife lay in its sheath, and seemed to tingle at the copper on his collarbones. More, the flickers… followed, somehow, tiny lights sparking a connexion between stone and fingers, carried on Wind’s breath.
He shook his hand, as if shaking away one of insectKin, and the light shattered into several sparks that fled back into the slick surface.
Yet, the t’rešalt remained, humming. Waiting.
It speaks to you, Hare said. It knows you. As River knows you. As Wind and Earth, Fire and Sky all know you. Maybe there are answers to be found in it.
Wind and Earth, Fire and Sky and River…
Tokela peered down at the hareKin mask, frowning. This is forbidden.
Yet here we are.
Silence, with only the disappearing burble of the Riverling to break it. With a tiny growl of breath, Tokela untied the mask and set ša gently on the ground, just beside the tiny stream. After a few breaths of hesitation, he also shucked away what had given him the unpleasant tingle: both his knives, the few copper ornaments. Then—slow, careful—he reached for the not-stone. His fingertips skated across the slick surface—and that, upon this closer inspection, seemed almost like the glašg he’d seen and touched from the traders. Belatedly he realised he was holding his breath, braced, waiting for another shock. It didn’t come.
Instead the strange, furred streaks of light gathered beneath his fingertips, followed as he moved, where he moved, and left behind pale ghosts of where he’d traced. Like sketching…
A smile touched Tokela’s lip and remained there. His fingers sketched a feather made of blue-white sparks, then a wing, then…
“I’d heard this place was forbidden to those a’Naišwyrh.”
Tokela whirled.
Mordeleg held both of Tokela’s knives, and his eyes gleamed yellow in the muted light. “This is the outLander place, isn’t it? The gate to Chepiś. Do you come here often?”
There was no answer Tokela could make. It was no comfort that, from behind him, he could feel the little tickles of warmth and spun blue-white, and the t’rešalt humming an odd, low song that rose the hair along his nape.
Or maybe that was because Mordeleg took one step closer. “Did you enjoy Spear Dance?”
He had. He had.
“Did you bring the filthy outlier here, then? He must have serviced you quickly. Hardly time enough to enjoy it.”
Cheeks flaming, Tokela spat, “I more enjoyed kicking your tail into the dirt!”
“You were lucky.” Mordeleg bent, put the knives back onto the ground. More fool him, Tokela silently sneered—or maybe not; Mordeleg’s next motion was to step over them, putting himself between them and Tokela. “But you were lucky before too many. You owe me, now.”
“I owe you a deeper cut with my blade.”
“I think it’s time we used my blade.”
“You don’t have one. MidLanders are soft; they use blunt edges to dig in sand.”
“Says the one who claims his sire was one of us, who lives with posturing, dull fish-eaters.” Mordeleg’s voice dripped scorn. “And then comes to meet his true kin in the forbidden places, just as your dam did. Don’t pretend you were sired by a midLander, half-breed. Your mother took after her horsetalker granddam, opening her legs
