* * *
Silverfox walked the dunes of the coast. Her hair, long uncut and uncombed, whipped about her head. She hugged herself as she went; the wind was cold this day. Sea-birds hovered overhead, their wings backswept like strung bows. It was odd, she considered as she went, how she was alone yet felt as if she had to be on her own. Because of course she was never truly alone. Within her Bellurdan, the giant Thelomen, raged for action, while Nightchill, the ancient Sister of Cold Nights, and the true wellspring of her power, counselled patience. Closest to her in her humanity was Tattersail, the mage, once of the Malazan imperial cadre. She too urged patience.
And yet what of Silverfox? What of her? What did she wish? The sad fact was that she had no idea. Hers was the mere frail soul of a girl, full of doubts and fears. How could she set herself against such potent beings? How could she even be certain which thoughts were her own?
She raised her hands to study them, turned them over. Skin sun-darkened, stretched thin and dry, age-spotted, joints knotted and swollen – not the hands of the young girl she held in her mind’s eye. Her creation, birth, and maturation had consumed the life of her mother. As now it was consuming hers. Yet she was content; it was just. She only hoped there would be enough time. The Imass had waited untold thousands of years for her arrival, a living Bonecaster who could release them from their ritual, and now that life was slipping away. Should she fail, how much longer would they have to wait again?
If there ever could be a second chance for redemption.
The wind gusted, sands hissing about her, lashing her, and she turned her face away. The stiff brown grasses clinging to the dunes shushed and grated. She saw Pran Chole standing alone on the shore, facing out to sea, and her chest tightened in bands of dread. No – not again.
Though it was the last thing she wanted to face, she clambered down the sand slopes to the strand. He did not turn when she joined him. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
Pran was slow to answer. ‘I am not certain. I sense something … different.’
‘Different? How?’
Dry tendons creaked as he turned his ravaged face to hers. ‘Powerful.’
She suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Nightchill wavered close to her consciousness as if to reassure her with the message: do not fear, I am here.
I am no child to need such soothing, she cast against the presence in her thoughts.
Regardless, I am here should there be need.
‘It comes,’ Pran breathed, and he extended a skeletal arm, all bone and desiccated flesh, pointing.
Silverfox sought out her own powers as a Bonecaster, a shaman, in her own right.
A head broke through the waves, its owner obviously walking the rising shore, approaching. Patches of long hair clung here and there over the bare dome of a tannin-stained skull. Dark empty sockets beneath thick brow-ridges, full wide cheekbones over lipless jaws that still carried strips of muscle and tendon. Next came chest and shoulders of bone beneath a ragged hide shirt, coarsely sewn, with sleeves all torn and stained.
At her side Pran Chole made one faltering step forward, as if half moving to greet the newcomer. A dry breath, like a sigh, escaped his throat.
‘What is it?’ Silverfox asked.
The newcomer approached, bowed on one knee to her. ‘Greetings, Summoner,’ he murmured in the T’lan voice that was the mere brush of falling leaves. ‘It is an honour.’
Pran Chole took another hesitant step closer. ‘I am Pran Chole. We of the Kron salute you.’
‘I am Tolb Bell’al,’ the newcomer answered, ‘Bonecaster to the Ifayle T’lan Imass. And long have I been absent.’
And to Silverfox’s utter astonishment, the two Imass embraced. For a time they held one another at arm’s length, seeming to study each other. Ifayle, she marvelled, amazed. According to the Kron they’d been lost long ago. Some even claimed they were lost here, on Assail.
‘Long has it been since the steppes of the Has’erin, Pran,’ said Tolb.
‘Indeed. That was a parting of many tears.’
‘Yet we meet again.’
Silverfox stepped up. ‘Pardon, Tolb of the Ifayle, but I must know … have you been here before?’
The two relinquished their grips. The newcomer turned to face her. She felt the full power of his regard, and it was potent indeed. This one may be the last and only shaman of the Ifayle, she thought. He carries their fate upon his ravaged shoulders. ‘No, Summoner,’ he answered. ‘But the Ifayle are here and I have searched everywhere to know the answer to their fate. I found it nowhere, and despaired. Until your arrival. I see now that we merely had to wait for you to come to us.’
Merely! Silverfox felt her knees weaken at the ages of weight that one small word carried.
‘So … you know.’
‘Yes. I alone escaped and have spent all this time in search of an answer. And now here you are.’
‘I?’
‘Yes.’ He bowed once more. ‘Summoner, we must travel north. The answers are there. In the far north.’
Pran Chole also faced her. ‘Summoner? What say you?’
The moment Tolb spoke she’d felt the right of it. In truth, she’d known it since they arrived on this shore. Yet she had avoided it. Dreaded the final irrevocable hard choices. She rubbed her hands up her arms and held herself. ‘I must face Omtose Phellack unveiled. Something the world has not seen in tens of thousands of years.’
‘Not you,’ said Pran.
She blinked at him, a touch irritated. ‘Not I?’
‘No. Tolb and I and the remaining Bonecasters shall. As during the ancient unveilings when the Odhan was scoured clean by rivers of ice leagues thick. Or the war over the rich fields of the Gareth’eshal, which yet lay lost to us beneath the sea.’
‘Then what of me?’
‘Summoner,’ Tolb spoke gently, ‘you must bring the Kerluhm to heel. You must stand before them and deny them their war.’
‘Your war,’ she corrected. ‘You also swore the ritual.’
The Ifayle Bonecaster nodded deeply then, his neck creaking, and it seemed to Silverfox that a great exhalation of repentance shuddered from the ancient. ‘A question of interpretation. They choose to fight it. We choose to end it.’
This near confession touched her deeply and she felt an urge to console the man though he was a walking corpse to her vision. Yet, she wondered, what differences truly lie between us? Only the accidental timing of birth. I could easily have been hearthmate to him, or he born of the Rhivi. She swept an arm to Pran. ‘Gather everyone.’
‘Summoner,’ Pran said, a warning in his voice. ‘It will be a long journey.’
‘How so?’
‘We cannot move through Tellann – Omtose inhibits this. We must travel across the land. So did the Jaghut deny us tracts of land and slow our progress in the elder ages.’
Silverfox stared, speechless. Walk … on foot all the way north across this enormous continent? It would take months! Still, was she not of the Rhivi? Why let yet another migration deter her? She smoothed her layered hides down her hips. ‘Then let us go at once.’ And she headed for her tent to pack.
Behind her, Tolb Bell’al and Pran Chole shared a glance that could almost be said to contain humour. ‘You chose well, Pran,’ Tolb murmured, his breathless voice nearly lost in the wind.
‘It was she who chose to come to us,’ he answered.