still has hair, a fall of long dead gray strands plastered across the skull and over one eye, like magically straightened cobweb. He squats and brushes the hair aside, touches the bone behind, pushes gently against one yellowed temple. There is no give. The skull is cemented to the stump, just as its owner s still-living head once was. He s seen it before; it s Aldrain sorcery, a favorite terror tactic of the Vanishing Folk wherever humans tried to defy them. Seethlaw once told him that the heads would live indefinitely provided the stump roots drew water.
Which makes this the result of either some long-ago drought or a passage of time so colossal Ringil s sanity reels away from the edge of contemplating it.
Or Seethlaw lied to you.
He straightens up with a grimace. It s a hypothesis he prefers not to entertain. Seethlaw as Aldrain warlord, murderous, cruel and proud, walking amid flickering lightnings, the epitome of the dwenda out of myth, striking down all before him with dispassionate unconcern that, all that, Ringil can live with. But Seethlaw the dwenda, dishonest and manipulative as any sweet-lipped harbor-end whore
Well, then. An immense gulf of time instead, time for even the sorcery of the Aldrain to finally weaken and lose its grip on the forces of decay.
Here, perhaps, is rationale, and an escape at last. A letting go he can allow himself.
Perhaps he s been unable to find Seethlaw in the Gray Places because some vast tilting mechanism, something like the long orbits of comets that Grashgal once tried to explain to him on the sleepless eve of battle at Rajal, or wait, wait, simpler, look, some gargantuan windmill arm in time has swung back up and taken the Vanishing Folk away once more; has opened a gap many hundreds of thousands of years wide and left the Aldrain and all their arts, in some irrevocable fashion, on the far side.
What would you give to really believe that, Gil?
What would you give to deny it?
Oi, Eskiath. You going to stand around here moping forever?
Ringil jerks around, disbelieving. The stone circle flickers around him like granite lightning, like drilled reflex once, twice, to the beat of his suddenly elevated pulse.
Eg?
It certainly seems so. The familiar barrel-chested bulk is there, the bits of talismanic iron strung in the gray-straggled, tangled hair. The seamed and weathered face, split in a grin. The staff lance jutting up behind his shoulder like a tall and gaunt old friend peering over. From somewhere, this Egar has acquired one steel-capped tooth and a scar across the chin that Ringil doesn t remember him having, but for the rest, it s the Dragonbane, large as life and stood there on the path at Ringil s back, as seemingly solid as the stones that flicker in and out of being between the two of them.
Egar?
The figure snorts. You know someone else shows up whenever you ve got yourself neck-deep in shit and digs you out?
Weak gesture around. I m not
No? Egar steps forward and grabs him by the shoulders. Fingers dig into his muscles with bruising steppe nomad force. Well, you sure look like shit, Gil. Want to know the truth? You look like a pony on ten days gallop and no decent forage. Whoever s riding you needs to give it a rest.
Fast thoughts of Dakovash, as swiftly put away. Gone, honest look.
No one s fucking riding me, he drawls.
That d be a first, then. The Dragonbane draws him close, crushes him in a bear hug the Egar he knows back in the world would not have allowed himself. Ringil coughs for exaggerated effect, and Egar lets him go. Sets him back at a more accustomed arm s length and grins. Good to see you again, Gil.
Yeah, you, too. As with Shend, as with Ishil, he knows he shouldn t engage but he can t help it. He s tired of the detachment, tired of standing aloof. So what if his friends are phantoms now. What you doing here, man?
The Dragonbane shrugs. Just come to walk with you awhile.
It s throwaway, but for just a moment, Ringil sees the seamed brow crease, sees this version of his old friend searching for the memories the Gray Places will not let him have. How did I get here, where is this place, what came before? Ringil curses his own lack of restraint and seeks rapid distraction for them both. He notices a thin silver chain draped over the Dragonbane s chest, some flattened object swaying gently from the impact of their embrace.
What s this, then? Reaching and scooping the object up into his palm. Never had you down for a medallion man.
Well, you gave it to me, mate.
Ringil blinks. The flattened disk is a three-elemental piece, struck with the face of Akal the Great and worn dull with age. The ends of the chain are welded into it, and the coin itself looks to have melted badly in the process. During his time in Yhelteth, coins like this would have passed through his hands as often as water for washing. But he can t remember ever having given one to Egar.
C mon, Gil. You know better than this. Doesn t pay to focus on detail in the Gray Places. Doesn t pay to question your companions too closely. To wonder what they might really be.
Or where it s all leading you.
He drops his hand, lets the coin swing back against the Dragonbane s chest. It s as if the other man s bulk were suddenly darker and harder, more gnarled oak tree trunk than human flesh. More animate statue than man.
He staves off a shiver. Manufactures a small, tight smile. Claps the perhaps of Egar on one troll-solid shoulder.
Want to walk with me, huh? Walk this way, then.
Yeah, if I could walk that way, I d be making a living in Madam Ajana s floor show.
The old, stupid jokes always the best. But hearing it drove a spike in behind Ringil s eyes, and he turned quickly away, blinking and gesturing wide.
Seen the skulls?
Yeah. Fucking dwenda, huh?
Seethlaw flickers through his recollection, cool to the touch and gorgeous, eyes deep with knowing you could drown in.
Yeah, he agrees. Fucking dwenda.
Of course, he loses Egar, just like all the others, before they've gone more than a couple of miles. It s a slower bleed this time, the Dragonbane fading and flickering like a candle in a bad draft, as if there s some larger storm blowing outside this tented gray sky, and short spiteful gusts can occasionally get in. It lasts for a while, the steppe nomad gone, then abruptly back, as if he s suddenly thought of some last thing he needs to say, as if he can t quite make up his mind whether it s safe now to leave Ringil on his own in this place.
Here you still got that dragon-tooth dagger I gave you?
Ringil pats his sleeve where the weapon rests.
You want to hang on to that, it s a good knife.
I know.
Ringil rolls with it, because, well, it s the Gray Places, what else is he going to do? He keeps up a fa ade of studied calm and normal conversation, pausing when he s left suddenly alone, picking up the thread again when Egar reappears.
Poltar the Shaman, yeah, you said.
The old fuck has it coming, Gil. I mean, if I don t go back there and gut him for what he did, who will?
Maybe they ll get sick of him. When he can t deliver on the spring rains, or the steppe ghouls show up again despite all his stick-shaking.
Nobody shakes sticks up there, Gil. That s a bunch of lizardshit romance some asshole writer at court came up with for one of those Noble-Savages-of-the-Steppe pieces they pack the theaters with down there. Seriously, I am so tired of seeing a bunch of little inkspurts who never built a campfire in their life pontificate about the trials and tribulations of iron-thewed warriors and
And gone.
Bleak marsh to the horizon and the wind for company.
