PROLOGUE (35 page)

Stronghand considered.” Isa. Ardaneka's chief, because he came only when he saw that all the others had allied with me. A Moerin pup will need to be found, to groom as chieftain over what remains of that tribe. But send on this expedition those who can walk with their eyes open." A thought occurred, and he turned it over and around, examining it, before he spoke it out loud.” Let them take slaves with them, ones who are both strong and clever. There may be much that can be discovered from among the slaves of the other tribes."

Of all his people, only Tenth Son had ceased being surprised when Stronghand made use of his slaves in unexpected ways. Tenth Son canted his head to one side, in the way of a dog listening, and looked thoughtful.” It will be done," he agreed.” There is another way to look for the tree sorcerers. News of them must surely come to the merchants who sail from port to port. Although

Bloodheart lost the city of Hundse—" What the humans called Gent.” —much treasure still came to our tribe by his efforts. Some of these treasures we could trade, and the ones who trade could listen and seek news in that way."

The words afflicted him as mightily as would the sun's brightness, shorn of cloud cover. He had not expected his brother to think so cleverly.” I must consider what you say."

The SwiftDaughters moved away about their own errands, those things that mattered most: the continuation of the life of the tribe. No wonder that they left him to work alone, unremarked. In their eyes, such enterprises as raiding and plunder, fighting and conquest, were insignificant and trivial. In a thousand winters the rock would remain much as it always had, while his bones, and his efforts, would have long since been ground into dust.

With chieftain's staff in hand, he took the long walk up to the fjall. Long halls gave way to abandoned slave pens, empty except for a few ragged slaves too stupid to leave their confines. Always, as he passed, he would first smell and then see a half dozen or more scraping mindlessly at the dirt or rocking from side to side in the ruins of their old shelters. The decrepit lean-to barracks in which the slaves had once wintered had been torn down and the wood and stone reused to build decent halls. Deacon Ursuline and her people had been industrious in the weeks since he had taken the chieftainship of Rikin.

Fields spread everywhere along the lower slopes, fenced in by low rock walls. The human slaves once owned by his vanquished brothers had been given a measure of freedom under the strict supervision of his own warriors and those of his slaves whom he trusted. Now they toiled to grow crops where crops were suited to the soil and drainage. Higher up, half-grown children shepherded flocks of sheep and goats and the herds of cattle on which the RockChildren depended. Slaves at work in field and pasture noticed him pass, but none were foolish enough to stop working or to stare.

Fields gave way to meadow and meadowlands to a sparse forest of spruce, pine, and birch. As the path banked higher, the forest opened up, shedding the other trees until only birch grew with a scattering of scrub and heather shorn flat by wind. The last of the stunted trees fell away as he emerged onto the high fjall, the land of rock and moss and scouring wind. The wind whipped at his staff, making the bones and iron rods tied to the crosspiece clack alarmingly. His braided hair rustled and twined along one shoulder, as if it retained a memory of the living hair grown by the merfolk.

A rime of frost covered the ground. The youngest WiseMother had made some progress on the trail since he had last come this way. He brought her an offering, as he always did: this day, a dried portion of the afterbirth from a slave. Let it serve as a symbol of life's transience, and his impatience. He did not stay to speak with her, since even a brief exchange might take hours. Instead, he walked on along the trail toward the ring of WiseMothers. At first they appeared like stout pillars but as he closed in, careful to avoid stepping on the snaking lines of silvery sand that marked the trails made by the deadly ice wyrms, the WiseMothers' shapes came into focus. Although they had all but stiffened entirely into stone, the curve of limbs and heads remained apparent, a vestige of their time among the mobile.

The WiseMothers congregated in a circle at the rim of the nesting grounds. Here he paused, checking the stones gathered into his pouch, watching the smooth hollow of sand that lay before him. Only the WiseMothers knew what they were incubating under that expanse of silver sand.

One stone at a time, he made his careful way out to the hummock that bulged up in the center of the hollow. The smooth, rounded dome radiated warmth and smelled faintly of sulfur, but once he was standing on it, he was safe from the ice wyrms that inhabited the glimmering hollow around which the WiseMothers gathered. There, in the solitude afforded him by the perilousness of his surroundings, he contemplated the path he had walked so far, the place he stood now, and the journey that still lay before him.

A stray leaf fluttered over the hollow and came to rest, so lightly, on the sand. A gleaming, translucent claw thrust up from beneath the sands, hooked the leaf, and yanked it under. All was still again. The wind sighed around his body. He heard a distant rockfall as a low rumble, so far away that it might have been a dream. But when he closed his eyes to slide into the resting trance, the same blank emptiness met him, dull and gray.

Alain was still gone, their link shattered.

He was utterly alone.

Night fell. Standing as still as any ancient stone lost under the canopy of stars, he heard the WiseMothers speaking.

Move. South. Press. East. Shift. The. Fire. River's. Flow. Westward. Ten. Lengths.

The. Sea. Waters. Will. Rise.

Listen.

Earth. Cries. For. Earth.

What. Was. Torn. Asunder. Returns.

Make. Room.

His were not the only new ideas. Others among his people were learning to think. The words of Tenth Son rose in his memory: "We could trade. We could seek news in the ports of humankind."

In the old days, before the rise of the warring chieftains in the time of Bloodheart's own sire, the RockChildren had traded with the human tribes and, of course, with the fisherfolk. The wars for supremacy had changed all that. The rich harvest brought by slaving, the ease of plunder, and the joy of raiding had altered the old ways. What need to trade for what you could take for nothing?

Yet every stone thrown into calm water casts ripples. Just as tribes that warred incessantly among themselves could never truly grow strong, no clan which built its power solely on plunder had any hope of long-lasting success. The store of riches Bloodheart had amassed would serve Stronghand, but by themselves these treasures were just objects. They had only what worth others set on them. Of course that was a kind of worth he could exploit. War had its uses, yet it alone could not achieve all things.

He stood in the center of the nesting grounds and listened to the waking "awks" of gulls. The horizon paled toward dawn. Any one life span mattered little in the long unwinding of the world's life, whose span was measured by the conversations of the WiseMothers and not the transitory and quickly forgotten struggles, as brief as those of the mayflies, of mortal creatures. That he thought and planned did not make him any more consequential than the least of Earth's creatures. But maybe it gave him more freedom to act.

A ruler who controls trade controls the passage of goods, controls taxes laid upon those goods, controls who gets what and what goes where. There was more than one way to stretch the hand of rulership over the ruled.

With dawn, the WiseMothers settled into their daylight stupor. One stone at a time, he made his way back across the sands of the nesting grounds. The day, shortening as autumn overtook them, was half gone by the time he reached the safety of solid ground. He retrieved his staff from its hiding place in the crack of a towering rock and started down the path that led off the fjall and into the valley. Passing the youngest WiseMother, he laid a sprig of moss in her rough grasp, and walked on.

An arrow of honking geese passed overhead. A kestrel skimmed a distant rise. Stronghand crossed from fjall to birch forest and down into the denser pine and spruce woodlands. In the distance ax blows rang to a steady rhythm. The chopping ceased, and a man called a warning. The sound of a tree cracking and falling splintered the air. The thud of its impact shuddered along the wind, and that same voice shouted orders.

Curious, he took the side path that led to the upper meadows. In a clearing, his slaves were building their church.

It was rising fast. One among them had devised a cunning way of working with northern trees, many of which were too slender to be split into planks. Log-built, the structure had a squat, ungainly look. A few half-grown slaves, lackwits by the look of them, hung around at the clearing's edge and stared, jabbering in bestial cries. These weak-minded beasts even got in the way of the laborers trimming branches from downed trees or scraping off bark or planing logs with stone adzes and axes.

Deacon Ursuline saw him and hurried over, followed by the male who acted as chieftain among the slaves, although he only called himself Papa Otto. A gull circled above the clearing, no doubt searching for scraps of food. Its "awk" was harsh and nagging, and soon a second gull coasted into view, hanging back along the tree line.

"My lord." Ursuline used terms familiar to humankind, and he accepted them from her. Even though she was only human and therefore very like to the beasts, she was still owed some measure of the authority and respect granted to OldMother. Because she alone of all his slaves was no longer afraid of him, she spoke frankly.” You have treated fairly .with us, my lord, as we both know. Although God enjoin that none should be held as slaves, both you and I know that slaves exist both among the Eika and among humankind. Because of that, we who were made captive

still live captive to your will. But let me ask you this: Was it your will that some among us were taken away this morning with Rikin war parties?"

"So it was." Although Alain no longer inhabited his dreams, he retained the fluent speech he had learned in that dreaming.” A few of your kind who are strong and clever have been taken to act as spies. They will travel with my own warriors to see if any of my new allies speak with a different voice when I do not stand before them. Those of your kind can speak with the human slaves among the other tribes, for it may be that the slaves those who have wit will have heard things that would otherwise remain concealed from us."

"Why should the slaves of other tribes tell the truth?" demanded Papa Otto.

"Surely in this way word will spread," observed Stronghand.” They will have hope of gaining such freedom as you have earned, as long as the Eika remain under my rule."

"There is truth in what you say," said Ursuline. She glanced at Otto, and an unspoken message—unreadable to any creature except another human—passed between them.

"Who are these working here?" Stronghand indicated the folk who, having paused in their labors to stare when he entered the clearing, had now selfconsciously gone back to work.

"Have you any complaints of our labor?" asked Ursuline gently.” Has any task been left undone that you or your captains have requested? Is any animal untended? Are any fields left to the wild? Is there not firewood enough for the winter, and charcoal for the forges?"

"You are bold," said Stronghand, but he admired her for it.

She smiled, as if she knew his thoughts.” You have no complaint, because we have worked harder now that you have fulfilled your share of the bargain laid between you and me."

"Yet I am still troubled by these among you who roam as do the animals and yet provide neither work nor meat. They are only a burden. With the hardships of winter coming on, they must be disposed of."

"How are we to choose among them, my lord?" asked Papa Otto.

"Kill the ones who remain animals. I see them here and there about the valley, no better than pigs roaming in the forest and quite

a bit filthier. They are vermin. They are of no possible use to me, nor to you."

"None of them are animals, my lord," retorted Otto. He was a strong chief for the human slaves, but weak because he feared killing.” It is only that they have been treated as animals, and bred and raised as animals by your people. They have forgotten the ways of humankind."

"That makes them useless to us, does it not?"

"Nay, my lord," said Ursuline quickly. She laid a hand on Otto's arm, a gesture which served to stop the words in his mouth.” It may be true that those of the slaves born and raised in the slave pens for many generations without benefit of the church's teaching will never be able to work and speak as we do. But they are still of use to you."

"In what way?"

"They can breed. Their children can be raised by those of us who were not crippled by the slave pens, and those children will serve you as well as any of us do. As long as you treat them as you do us. Perhaps those children will serve you better than we can, for they will only know loyalty and service to you. They will not recall another life, as we do."