Prologue
The ancient wars of the T'lan Imass and the Jaghut saw the world torn asunder. Vast armies contended on the ravaged lands, the dead piled high, their bone the bones of hills, their spilled blood the blood of seas. Sorceries raged until the sky itself was fire …
Ancient Histories, Vol. I Kinicik Karbar'n
I
Maeth'ki Im (Pogrom of the Rotted Flower), the 33rd Jaghut War
298,665 years before Burn's Sleep.
Swallows darted through the clouds of midges dancing over the mudflats. The sky above the marsh remained grey, but it had lost its mercurial wintry gleam, and the warm wind sighing through the air above the ravaged land held the scent of healing.
What had once been the inland freshwater sea the Imass called Jaghra Til — born from the shattering of the Jaghut ice-fields — was now in its own death-throes. The pallid overcast was reflected in dwindling pools and stretches of knee-deep water for as far south as the eye could scan, but none the less, newly birthed land dominated the vista.
The breaking of the sorcery that had raised the glacial age returned to the region the old, natural seasons, but the memories of mountain-high ice lingered. The exposed bedrock to the north was gouged and scraped, its basins filled with boulders. The heavy silts that had been the floor of the inland sea still bubbled with escaping gases, as the land, freed of the enormous weight with the glaciers' passing eight years past, continued its slow ascent.
Jaghra Til's life had been short, yet the silts that had settled on its bottom were thick. And treacherous.
Pran Chole, Bonecaster of Cannig Tol's clan among the Kron Imass, sat motionless atop a mostly buried boulder along an ancient beach ridge. The descent before him was snarled in low, wiry grasses and withered driftwood. Twelve paces beyond, the land dropped slightly, then stretched out into a broad basin of mud.
Three ranag had become trapped in a boggy sinkhole twenty paces into the basin. A bull male, his mate and their calf, ranged in a pathetic defensive circle. Mired and vulnerable, they must have seemed easy kills for the pack of ay that found them.
But the land was treacherous indeed. The large tundra wolves had succumbed to the same fate as the ranag. Pran Chole counted six ay, including a yearling. Tracks indicated that another yearling had circled the sinkhole dozens of times before wandering westward, doomed no doubt to die in solitude.
How long ago had this drama occurred? There was no way to tell. The mud had hardened on ranag and ay alike, forming cloaks of clay latticed with cracks. Spots of bright green showed where windborn seeds had germinated, and the Bonecaster was reminded of his visions when spiritwalking — a host of mundane details twisted into something unreal. For the beasts, the struggle had become eternal, hunter and hunted locked together for all time.
Someone padded to his side, crouched down beside him.
Pran Chole's tawny eyes remained fixed on the frozen tableau. The rhythm of footsteps told the Bonecaster the identity of his companion, and now came the warm-blooded smells that were as much a signature as resting eyes upon the man's face.
Cannig Tol spoke. 'What lies beneath the clay, Bonecaster?'
'Only that which has shaped the clay itself, Clan Leader.'
'You see no omen in these beasts?'
Pran Chole smiled. 'Do you?'
Cannig Tol considered for a time, then said, 'Ranag are gone from these lands. So too the ay. We see before us an ancient battle. These statements have depth, for they stir my soul.'
'Mine as well,' the Bonecaster conceded.
'We hunted the ranag until they were no more, and this brought starvation to the ay, for we had also hunted the tenag until they were no more as well. The agkor who walk with the bhederin would not share with the ay, and now the tundra is empty. From this, I conclude that we were wasteful and thoughtless in our hunting.'
'Yet the need to feed our own young…'
'The need for more young was great.'
'It remains so, Clan Leader.'
Cannig Tol grunted. 'The Jaghut were powerful in these lands, Bonecaster. They did not flee — not at first. You know the cost in Imass blood.'
'And the land yields its bounty to answer that cost.'
'To serve our war.'
'Thus, the depths are stirred.'
The Clan Leader nodded and was silent.
Pran Chole waited. In their shared words they still tracked the skin of things. Revelation of the muscle and bone was yet to come. But Cannig Tol was no fool, and the wait was not long.
'We are as those beasts.'
The Bonecaster's eyes shifted to the south horizon, tightened.