'Overlapping? Ridged – that would improve purchase, I think.'
'Samar Dev, I know who these intruders are.'
'Old friends of yours?'
'We did not speak of friendship at the time. Call down Boatfinder, I have questions for him-'
The sentence was unfinished. Samar Dev looked over to find Karsa standing stock-still, his gaze on the trees beyond the three canoes.
She turned and saw a massive hulking shape pushing its forefront clear of bending saplings. An enormous, scaled head lifted from steep shoulders, eyes fixing on the Toblakai.
Who raised his stone sword in a two-handed grip, then surged forward.
The giant beast's roar ended in a high-pitched squeal, as it bolted – backward, into the thicket. Sudden crashing, heavy thumpsKarsa plunged into the stand, pursuing.
Samar Dev found that she was holding her dagger in her right hand, knuckles white.
The crashing sounds grew more distant, as did the frantic squeals of the scaled bear.
She turned at scrabbling from the slope and watched Boatfinder come down to huddle at her side. His lips were moving in silent prayers, eyes on the broken hole in the stand of trees.
Samar sheathed her dagger and crossed her arms. 'What is it with him and monsters?' she demanded.
Boatfinder sat down in the damp mulch, began rocking back and forth.
Samar Dev was just completing her second burial when Karsa Orlong returned. He walked up to the hearth she had lit earlier and beside which Boatfinder sat hunched over and swathed in furs, voicing a low moaning sound of intractable sorrow. The Toblakai set his sword down.
'Did you kill it?' she asked. 'Did you cut its paws off, skin it alive, add its ears to your belt and crush its chest in with your embrace?'
'Escaped,' he said in a grunt.
'Probably halfway to Ehrlitan by now.'
'No, it is hungry. It will return, but not before we have moved on.'
He gestured to the remaining bodies. 'There is no point – it will dig them up.'
'Hungry, you said.'
'Starving. It is not from this world. And this land here, it offers little – the beast would do better on the plains to the south.'
'The map calls this the Olphara Mountains. Many lakes are marked, and I believe the small one before us is joined to others, further north, by a river.'
'These are not mountains.'
'They once were, millennia past. They have been worn down. We are on a much higher elevation than we were just south of here.'
'Nothing can gnaw mountains down to mere stubs, witch.'
'Nonetheless. We should see if we can repair these canoes – it would be much easier-'
'I shall not abandon Havok.'
'Then we will never catch up with our quarry, Karsa Orlong.'
'They are not fleeing. They are exploring. Searching.'
'For what?'
The Toblakai did not answer.
Samar Dev wiped dirt from her hands, then walked over to the hearth. '
I think this hunt we are on is a mistake. The Anibar should simply flee, leave this broken land, at least until the intruders have left.'
'You are a strange woman,' Karsa pronounced. 'You wished to explore this land, yet find yourself made helpless by it.'
She started. 'Why do you say that?'
'Here, one must be as an animal. Passing through, quiet, for this is a place that yields little and speaks in silence. Thrice in our journey we have been tracked by a bear, silent as a ghost on this bedrock.
Crossing and re-crossing our trail. You would think such a large beast would be easy to see, but it is not. There are omens here, Samar Dev, more than I have ever seen before in any place, even my homeland.
Hawks circle overhead. Owls watch us pass from hollows in dead trees.
Tell me, witch, what is happening to the moon?'
She stared into the fire. 'I don't know. It seems to be breaking up.
Crumbling. There is no record of anything like that happening before, neither the way it has grown larger, nor the strange corona surrounding it.' She shook her head. 'If it is an omen, it is one all the world can see.'
'The desert folk believe gods dwell there. Perhaps they wage war among themselves.'
'Superstitious nonsense,' she said. 'The moon is this world's child, the last child, for there were others, once. She hesitated. 'It may be that two have collided, but it is difficult to be sure – the others were never very visible, even in the best of times. Dark, smudged, distant, always in the shadow cast by this world, or that of the largest moon – the one we see most clearly. Of late, there has been much dust in the air.'
'There are more fireswords in the sky,' Karsa said. 'Just before dawn, you may see ten in the span of three breaths, each slashing down through the dark. Every night.'
'We may learn more when we reach the coast, for the tides will have changed.'
'Changed, how?'
'The moon's own breath,' she replied. 'We can measure that breath… in the ebb and flood of the tides. Such are the laws of existence.'
The Toblakai snorted. 'Laws are broken. Existence holds to no laws.
Existence is what persists, and to persist is to struggle. In the end, the struggle fails.' He was removing strips of smoked bhederin meat from his pack. 'That is the only law worthy of the name.'
She studied him. 'Is that what the Teblor believe?'
He bared his teeth. 'One day I will return to my people. And I will shatter all that they believe. And I will say to my father, 'Forgive me. You were right to disbelieve. You were right to despise the laws that chained us.' And to my grandfather, I shall say nothing at all.'
'Have you a wife in your tribe?'
'I have victims, no wives.'
A brutal admission, she reflected. 'Do you intend reparation, Karsa Orlong?'
'That would be seen as weakness.'
'Then the chains still bind you.'
'There was a Nathii settlement, beside a lake, where the Nathii had made slaves of my people. Each night, after hauling nets on the lake, those slaves were all shackled to a single chain. Not a single Teblor so bound could break that chain. Together, their strengths and wills combined, no chain could have held them.'
'So, for all your claims of returning to your people and shattering all that they believe, you will, in truth, need their help to manage such a thing. It sounds as if it is not just your father from whom you require forgiveness, Karsa Orlong.'
'I shall take what I require, witch.'
'Were you one of those slaves in the Nathii fishing village?'
'For a time.'
'And, to escape – and clearly you did escape – you ended up needing the help of your fellow Teblor.' She nodded. 'I can see how that might gnaw on your soul.'
He eyed her. 'You are truly clever, Samar Dev, to discover how all things fit so neatly in place.'
'I have made long study of human nature, the motivations that guide us, the truths that haunt us. I do not think you Teblor are much different from us in such things.'
'Unless, of course, you begin with an illusion – one that suits the conclusion you sought from the start.'
'I try not to assume veracity,' she replied.
'Indeed.' He handed her a strip of meat.
