growstone wall, high above all their heads.
Bren and Noli were senior enough that they had a right to a place at the front of the crowd, a favoured position, and they led the rest through. Kilushepa looked around with amused contempt. At the front Voro was already here. He greeted Bren, his superior, and nodded at Milaqa.
At the heart of the Chamber, surrounded by the crowd, was a growstone plinth, seamlessly moulded to the floor, with its tilted upper surface carefully placed, Milaqa knew, so that it faced the south. The surface bore the Etxelur concentric-rings symbol, carved growstone plated with a gleaming bronze sheen. The sunlight from the shaft cast a spot on the wall just above and to one side of the plinth, the beam easily visible in the dusty air, sloping down from the shaft straight as an arrow-shot.
The ceremony had already begun. The new Annid of Annids, Raka, stood by the head priest, looking nervous and self-conscious, weighed down by Kuma’s big bronze breastplate. More priests stood by, chanting in unison through mouths distorted by wolves’ jaws. Young Riban stood with them, working the shaker; it was the skull of a deer, its eyes stopped up, containing rattling scraps of creamy Etxelur flint, a very ancient treasure.
And here was Teel. Wearing his own robe as a member of the House of the Owl, he sidled up to Milaqa. ‘Hello, little Crow.’
‘Don’t call me that… I don’t feel as clever as a crow at all.’
‘Tell me what you’ve found out.’
She quickly outlined what she had heard of Bren’s history of plotting with the Hatti. ‘And that’s why my mother had to die. Just as we suspected. She was in the way of his scheme to sell our secrets to the Hatti. I don’t think Kilushepa or any of the Hatti had anything to do with it directly. But Bren used the advantage of the iron his allies gave him.’
Teel thought this over. ‘Do you have the arrowhead?’
She handed over the bit of iron, warm from her body heat. ‘Why? What are you going to do?’
‘Leave it to me.’ Her uncle slipped away.
Noon approached, the unseen sun shifted in the sky, the beam of dust motes swept slowly through the air, the spot cast on the wall neared the plinth, and the priests continued their song.
Bren leaned over to speak to Qirum and Kilushepa in his workmanlike Hatti. ‘We are privileged to be here, to witness this. Lucky that today is a cloudless day! The shaft has been carefully arranged so that at midsummer noon, and only at that moment, the sun’s light will shine down on this spot — this plinth, its very heart, the centre of the circles. This marks a spot where, we believe, Ana herself once stood when the Wall was first built, long ago. You understand that we build the Wall continually, repairing the sea-facing surface as best we can, but continually building up the landward side. And as the Wall has thickened and grown, generations of master builders from the House of the Beaver have ensured that the shaft has been properly extended so that the miracle of the instant of solstice is always captured, this moment of exquisite symmetry, this point in space and in time on which the whole year pivots…’
As the spot of sunlight neared the centre of the circular ridges the priests’ chanting became more rapid, and Riban’s skull-shaking more excited. Behind Milaqa, people leaned and muttered and strained to see.
Qirum leaned over to Milaqa. ‘You promised me beer.’
‘So I lied. But you’re in for a show, I think…’
There was a collective gasp. The priests’ chanting cut off in confusion.
For, as Milaqa saw, the spot of solstice sunlight, now precisely centred in the growstone circles, picked out, not bronze, but iron — the arrowhead she had worn around her neck.
Teel stepped forward. He stood before the plinth, so that the solstice light fell squarely on his face, as he surely intended. And he held up the arrowhead, on his palm.
‘Here!’ he said. ‘Look on this. This is how Kuma, Annid of Annids, died. Not from some accident on the hunt, not from a fall — from an arrow driven into her chest.’
Noli frowned. ‘What is this, Teel? What proof do you have?’
‘I dug it out of her chest with my own hands when she was lying out on the roof. And her daughter Milaqa saw me do it.’
Faces turned to Milaqa. She was overwhelmed. She felt a hand on her shoulder: cousin Riban, the priest. She was glad of his silent support.
Teel shouted, ‘An arrowhead of iron, hardened as only one people can make it — yours, queen of Hattusa.’ Holding the arrow, he pointed at Kilushepa.
Bren was frantically murmuring in the ear of the Tawananna, and Milaqa wondered how faithful his translation was. Kilushepa calmly looked back at Teel. Qirum was grinning at the fuss.
‘Hatti iron,’ Teel said now, ‘but it was no Hatti who pulled the bowstring — there was no Hatti within a day’s ride when Kuma died. It was one of her own who did this — one of her own people, one of those close enough for her to trust them with her life, on the hunt. Which of you?’ He glared at them all. ‘Do you dare lie, here and now, at the moment of solstice in this holiest of places? Will you lie before the spirit of Ana herself? Which of you?’ Now he confronted Bren. ‘You, Jackdaw?’
Fear and shock were evident in Bren’s eyes. But he was always quick-thinking. He looked around at the faces of the people — the angry priests, Noli and the furious Annids, the bemused foreign guests. Then he stepped forward. ‘Yes. All right, Teel, you pompous old woman. I got the arrows from a Hatti contact who was glad to help. It was not I who pulled the bowstring. You will never know who it was,’ and he glanced at Milaqa with a kind of cold cruelty. ‘But, yes, I planned it.’
Riban gripped Milaqa’s shoulder hard, holding her back.
But Voro gasped, ‘no.’ He turned to Milaqa in horror. ‘I didn’t know. I was there — if I’d known, I would have stopped it — I didn’t know, I swear!’
At Voro’s evident distress Bren’s expression flickered, as if guilt stabbed briefly. But he snapped, ‘There was no choice, boy!’ He glared around at the rest. ‘No choice! Kuma was an obstacle to progress, in these times of universal change. As are you fusty Annids, all of you, as stuck in the dark as the owl you claim as your House’s Other. The world is changing, and Northland must change with it. If we do, if we work with allies like the Hatti rather than keep them at a distance, we may become the greatest power the world has seen. If we do not, we may be wiped from the face of the land. And if we do survive,’ he said, growing in confidence and raising his voice, ‘if we survive, I, Bren, will be remembered by history, rightly, as the greatest hero since Prokyid himself!’
Noli stepped up to him, her nose a fraction from his. ‘Not if I can help it.’ The Annid looked over to the priests. ‘Bind him.’
There was uproar. The Annids present began to jostle with the Jackdaws, who tried to surround Bren. The foreigners, awed or amused, began their own pushing and shoving.
Qirum laughed out loud. He said to Milaqa, ‘I’m sorry about your loss. Truly. But I had no idea your people are so divided…’
‘Quiet,’ said Teel. When the din did not cease, he went back to the plinth. ‘Quiet!’
At his commanding bellow, the commotion stilled. Noli and Bren, surrounded by their followers, turned to him uncertainly.
‘Listen,’ said Teel. ‘Just listen.’
And Milaqa heard a distant rumble, like thunder carrying across the sea, though the day had been still and cloudless — thunder audible even here, deep in the growstone heart of the Wall.
21
‘Tibo. Tibo!’
Hands at his shoulders, shaking him. The air hot. More heat coming from the hard ground under his back. A roaring sound like a wave on the shore. The ground shuddering. He tried to open his mouth. His lips were gummed up, dry, and when he tried to lick them his tongue rasped on a kind of grit, sharp-tasting. Ash.
‘Tibo!’
He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, on a slope, his head lower than his feet. Shreds of white mist fled across the sky. He remembered the wall of ash and smoke coming at him, the hot air that had hurled him back
