THE SKY BEGAN TO DARKEN AND A VOICE BOOMED BEHIND THEM

It was the lament of something that was less than a beast and more than a natural phenomenon, the unnaturally drawn-out moan of a fiend most monstrous and uncommon. The fleeing travelers turned, and saw at last what had tried to ambush them.

It advanced not in the manner of a living creature but in the manner of sand. It had no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself. Everywhere and all of it was dark red, like all the rust that had ever afflicted the metals of the world squeezed into a swiftly shifting pyramid of rage. The dune howled and moaned and bellowed like some sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth.

And in the midst of all that geologic fury, two-thirds up the face of the oncoming mountain, were two eyes…

“This odd and engaging fantasy has an apparently African setting, but… owes far more to Grimm’s fairy tales…. It’s a wondrous journey.”

—Locus

“Top-drawer Foster, featuring a fast-paced mix of wry humor, high fantasy, and amazing new places and creatures.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Combines the flexibility of a picaresque adventure with the simplicity of a folktale. . . . This promising series opener belongs in most libraries.”

—Library Journal

“Etjole’s quest is reminiscent of The Odyssey.”

—VOYA

Also by Alan Dean Foster

The Journeys of the Catechist Series:

Carnivores of Light and Darkness
Into the Thinking Kingdoms
A Triumph of Souls

The Dig
Kingdoms of Light

Available from Warner Aspect

Copyright

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright © 1998 by Thranx, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

Warner Books, Inc.

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: October 2009

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2045-5

For Absalom…

Who burned to know how to read.

Cape Cross Station, Skeleton Coast, Namibia

November 1993

I

IT WAS THE MORNING AFTER THE SENSUOUS SECOND FULL MOON of Telengarra, which heralds the coming of the spring rains, when little Colai came running into the village to cry that there were dead people washing up on the beach. And not just dead people, but people of unnatural aspect attired in strange clothes, whose pale faces were unmarked by ritual scars yet sometimes overgrown with hair.

Most of the village was not yet awake when the frantic boy came running and shrieking past the houses. At first his mother thought it was a trick. She caught him and shook him, angry that he should disturb everyone’s morning for the sake of a joke. Then she saw something that, like a piece of grit, had become caught at the bottom of his eyes, and stopped shaking him. Together they hurried to the house of the chief.

Asab was just emerging as they arrived. He fumbled to adjust his fine musa-skin cloak with the impressive dark blue stripes and the phophilant headdress with its sweeping crest of intense red and yellow feathers. He was clearly upset at having been rousted from his sleep before normal cockcrow. Hastily donned, his headdress kept threatening to slip from his head.

“I saw them, I saw them!” In addition to Asab, a crowd had begun to gather around Colai and his mother as the boy declaimed breathlessly.

“Now, child,” the chief intoned solemnly, “what is it you think you have seen?” Other men and a few of the women clustered close, rubbing sleep from their eyes while fighting back the sour morning taste of recent dreams.

“Dead people, Chief Asab! Many of them, very different from us.” The boy barely paused for air as he turned and pointed. “On the beach. Above where the mussels and the tyrex shells grow!”

Sleepy faces glistening with a reluctance to believe turned to the tall, lanky head of the village. Asab briefly considered the child’s harangue before finally frowning down at the anxious, panting youth.

“We will go and see. And for your sake, boy, there had better be something on the sand besides shells and dried sea noodles!”

While barren of all vegetation save a little grass and a few hardy weeds, the beach was not devoid of wood. Gigantic logs cast ashore by the cold Samoria Current littered the sand and protruded from rocky outcroppings where they had been hurled by violent storms. Interspersed among the unbranched, well-traveled forest giants were the whitening bones of demised sea creatures large and small: whales and serpents, birds and batwings, fish and stoneaters. From such bountiful detritus did the villagers recycle useful materials for their homes and barns.

“There!” Colai pointed, but the gesture was unnecessary. Everyone saw the hungry dragonets circling over the spot.

There were a dozen or more of the little black scavengers. Wings folded, another four or five sat on the sand picking at irregular lumps that on closer inspection resolved themselves into perhaps a dozen human figures. Ululating and waving their spears as they approached, the villagers frightened the carrion-eaters away. Hissing their displeasure, the raven dragonets rose into the transparent air on noisome, membranous wings, content for now to circle slowly overhead. They would wait.

Truth to tell, if anything Colai had understated the matter. The bodies were more than passing strange. Just as he had claimed, several showed faces matted with hair, mostly black or brown but some as yellow as the gold that Morixis the Trader brought from the far southern mountains. The figures were clad in an excessive amount of clothing, all of it dyed overbright and some fashioned of cloth so fine it was soft as a little girl’s tears.

On top of this barbaric display of color most also wore armor of heavy cured leather of a type unknown to Asab or any of the other village warriors. Scenes that showed men fighting with one another and strange animals and buildings were deeply embossed on breastplates and leggings. With so much weight to carry it was a wonder that any of them had been washed ashore.

Asab and two of his best warriors knelt beside one man. With one exception, all the bodies on the beach were shorter and stockier than the average villager. They were also exclusively male.

“See.” Tucarak ran a finger along the dead man’s exposed cheek. It was cold with the damp of the sea and infused with death. “How smooth the skin is. How untouched.” With his other hand he traced the curving scar, a sign of manhood, that decorated his own cheek.

“And how pale,” added a disapproving Houlamu as he rose. “Who are these men, and where do they come from?” Raising his gaze, he squinted out to sea. Nothing was to be seen save the dark, chill water, not even a lingering cloud. There were only the endlessly rolling waves and the amazingly homogeneous deep blue of the morning sky.

“Well, they are dead, and I am sure they would not want their dying to be wasted.” With that Asab ceremoniously began the salvaging of the deceaseds’ belongings, beginning with their curious apparel and assiduously examining every bulge and pocket for anything, however foreign and exotic, that might prove useful to the village.

“Can we safely eat them, do you suppose?” Tucarak held a blood-and-salt-water-soaked shirt up to the sun. “They look like men. So they should taste like men.”

“Ho-yah,” agreed Asab. “We will let old Fhastal try a bit of leg. She will eat anything.” The chief chuckled softly. “If it does not kill her, we will know it is safe for the rest of us.”

Houlamu contemplated the proposed dismemberment with distaste. “You can eat them if you wish. I only eat what I know. Or who I know.” He nudged another of the limp bodies roughly with the butt of his spear.

“These are plumper folk than the Koipi or the Nalamhat.” As he spoke, Tucarak was tugging hard on the corpse’s unusual footgear. It was much too awkward and heavy to be worn on Naumkib feet, of course, but cut into pieces it might provide the makings for a couple of pairs of serviceable sandals. “If anything, I would think they would taste better than our neighbors.”

While the chief and his warriors debated the deceased visitants’ suitability for the cooking pot, other members of the tribe wandered up and down the waterline in search of other bodies. Among the searchers was a particularly tall warrior, tall even for a Naumkib, whose somber aspect was the subject of much good-natured gibing among his peers. In response to the frequent jokes made at his expense, Etjole would always smile tolerantly and nod. He was not one to spoil the fun of his hunting companions even when he was the butt of their entertainment.

“Help… me….”

The words were barely audible, and for a moment Etjole Ehomba thought they were only subtle distortions of the surf-music, sprinkled upon his innocent ears like wind-blown foam. Having paused momentarily, he started to resume his walk, convinced he had heard nothing.

“Please… by whatever god you pray to… help me….”

Not foam, not wind, but the dying utterances of a man very like himself. Halting, Ehomba looked northward along the shore with a tracker’s experienced eyes, sweeping the rocks and sand for signs of life. Eventually, he found it—or what was left of it.

The man was younger than himself, sturdily built, and clad in the most elaborate garments anyone had yet seen on the bodies on the beach. His fine leather armor extended down to cover his upper arms and legs, but it had not been enough to preserve him. There was a great hole in his right side, through which glistening red flesh and pale white bone were clearly visible. Ehomba wondered how he had survived even this long with so deep a wound. It was ragged around the edges, clear evidence of a bite. Whatever had done it had bitten clean through the thick, tough armor. A big shark might have made such a wound, he knew. There were many sharks in the waters offshore from the village. Yes, it might have been a shark—or something else.

The man’s hair was straight, shoulder length, and golden. Very different from the thick braids that were bound up in a tight bunch at the back of Ehomba’s neck. He marveled at the wispy strands. Leaning forward, he wiped sea slime and sand from the pallid face. At his kindly touch, the other’s eyes opened. They were a delicate, diluted blue, but not yet entirely dimmed, and they focused immediately on him.

“You… who are… ?”

“I am Etjole Ehomba, of the tribe of Naumkib. You and many others have been cast ashore on the beach below our village. Your companions are all dead.” His gaze flicked briefly over the cavity in the younger man’s torso. “You are dying too. I know a little medicine, but not enough to help you. Not even the old wise women of the village could help what I see. It is too late.”

The stranger’s reaction was not what Ehomba expected. The man’s eyes grew suddenly, shockingly wide. Reaching up, he clutched the taller man’s wool overshirt and used it to pull his ruined, bleeding upper body off the sand until his face was only a foot away from that of his finder. In light of the terrible injury he had suffered, the effort of will required to accomplish this feat was nothing short of astonishing.

Staring straight into Ehomba’s eyes, he hissed in his odd, uneven accent, “You must save her!”

“Save her? Save who?” Ehomba’s bewilderment was absolute.

“Her! The Visioness Themaryl of Laconda!” Remarkably, and with what invisible reserves of strength one could only imagine, the man was shaking Ehomba by the front of his overshirt.

“I do not know of what, or of whom, you speak,” the herder responded gently.

Exhausted by this ultimate physical exertion, the wounded stranger collapsed back on the sand. He was breathing more slowly now, and Ehomba could sense Death advancing fluidly across the surf, choosing as its avenue of approach, as it so often did, its friend the sea.

“Know that I am Tarin Beckwith, son of Bewaryn Beckwith, Count of Laconda North. The Visioness Themaryl was my countess, or my countess-to-be, until she was carried off by that pustulance that walks like a man and calls itself Hymneth the Possessed. Many”—he coughed raggedly, and blood spilled from his lips as from an overfull cup—“many of the sons and masters of the noble houses of Greater Laconda took a solemn oath never to rest until she was returned to us and her abductor punished. To my knowledge, I and my men were the only ones to track the monster’s ship this far.” He paused, wheezing softly, praying for breath enough to continue.

“There was a battle this morning, on the sea. My men fought valiantly. But Hymneth is in league with the evils of otherness. He cavorts with them, delights in their company, and calls upon them to help defend his miserable self. Against such foulness and depravity even brave men cannot always stand.” Once more the watery blue eyes, the life fading from them, fastened on Ehomba’s own. “I pass on the covenant to you, whoever you are. I charge you, on the departure of my soul, to save the innocent Themaryl and to restore her to the people of Laconda. With her abduction, the heart has gone out of that land, and all who dwell within it. I, Tarin Beckwith, place this on you.”

Ehomba shook his head slowly as he gazed down at the stranger. “I am but a simple herder of cattle and harvester of fish, Tarin Beckwith.” He gestured with the tip of his spear. “And this is a poor man’s land, spare of people and resources. Not a place in which to raise armies. I would not even know which way to begin searching.”

Raising himself off the sand with a second tremendous effort, Beckwith turned slightly at the waist and pointed. Sunlight glistened off his visible intestines. “To the northwest, across the sea. There! Having defeated the only ones capable of following him, Hymneth the depraved will feel safe in returning now to his home. I am told it lies in the fabled land of Ehl-Larimar, which is far to the west of Laconda. Seek him there, or find another who will.” Once more, clenching hands clawed at Ehomba’s simple attire. “You must do this, or the innocent Themaryl will be forever lost!”

“You expect too much of me, stranger Beckwith. I have a family, and cattle to watch over and protect, and—”

Ehomba halted in midsentence. His encumbrance delivered, the life force spent, the spirit of Tarin Beckwith of Laconda had at last fled his body. Gently but firmly, Ehomba disengaged the insensible fingers from his shirt and laid the upper part of the destroyed body down upon the cool sand. It lay there, teal blue eyes staring blankly at the sky, as the herdsman rose.

It would be a privilege, he knew, to consume a chop cut from the flank of so brave and dedicated a man. When the time came for the sharing out of the food, he would make a point of making this claim to Asab.

As to the dead man’s trust, there was nothing he could do about it, of course. He had spoken him the truth. There were family and herd and village responsibilities to look after. What matter to him the troubles and tribulations of a people from far away, or the carrying off of one woman?

Suarb and Deloog came running over. They were young men, not yet acknowledged elders, and they nodded to him respectfully as they knelt by the now motionless form at his feet. There was excitement in their voices, and their eyes were alight with the pleasure to be found in something new.

“Etjole, you found this one, but you do not take his belongings.” Suarb eyed him uncertainly while Deloog gazed at the heavily embossed leather armor, openly covetous.

“No. I have no interest in such things. They are yours if you want them.”

Elated at their good fortune, the two youths began to strip the body of useful material. As he yanked on a pants leg, Deloog watched the taller, older man curiously.

“These are fine things, Etjole. Why do you not take them?”

“I have been given something else, Deloog. Something I did not ask for and do not want, and I am not sure what to do with it.”

The youths exchanged a glance. Ehomba was known for sitting and saying nothing for long periods of time, even when he was not guarding the herds. A peculiar man, for certain, but kindly and always helpful. The boys and girls of the village, and not a few of their parents, thought him peculiar, but nice enough in his own quiet fashion.

So the two young men did not make fun of him behind his back as he walked away from them, up the beach toward a point of rocks. Besides, they were too excited by their booty.

Working his way up into the rocks, Ehomba found a flat, dry place and sat down, positioning his spear in the crook of his right arm and resting his chin on his crossed forearms. Small waves broke themselves against the cool, gray stone. Farther up the coast, seals and merapes played in the surf, occasionally hauling out to dry themselves on the sun-warmed beach. The merapes would crack clams and abalone to share with the seals, who did not have the benefit of hands with which to manipulate rocks.

Out there, somewhere, lay lands so distant he had never heard of them, exotic and alien. A place by the name of Laconda, and another called Ehl-Larimar. A woman being taken from one to the other against her will. A woman many men were willing to die for.

Well, he already had a woman worth dying for, and two children growing up strong and healthy. Also cattle, and a few sheep, and the respect of his contemporaries. Who was he to go searching across half a world or more on behalf of people he did not know and who would probably laugh at his untutored ways and plain clothes if they saw him?

But a brave and noble man had charged him with the duty as he lay dying. As it always did, the sight of the sea and the waves soothed Etjole. Yet he remained much troubled in mind.

Half the day was done when finally he rose and started back to the village. All the bodies had been removed from the beach, leaving only the dark stains of blood to show where they had lain. Come high tide, the sea would cleanse the sand, as it cleansed everything else it touched.

That night there was a solemn feast in honor of the strangers who had died on the shore below the village. Everyone partook of the cooking, and it was agreed without dispute that wherever they had come from, it was a land of plenty, for their flesh was sweet and uncorrupted. As he ate of Tarin Beckwith, Ehomba pondered the unfortunate man’s final words until those around him could no longer ignore his deep concern. Not wishing to lay his melancholy on them, he excused himself from the company of his wife and their friends, and sought out old Fhastal.

He found her by herself off to one side of the central firepit, sitting cross-legged against a tired tree while chewing with some difficulty on the remnants of a calf. Though white as salt, her hair was fastened in neat braids that spilled down her back, and she had decked herself out for the evening in her finest beads and long strips of colored leather. She looked up at him out of her one good eye and smiled crookedly. The other eye, blinded in youth, gleamed chalky as milk. Given her few remaining teeth, it was no wonder she was finding the meat tough going.

“Etjole! Come and sit with an old woman and we’ll give the young girls something to gossip about tomorrow!” Her grin fell away as she saw that his expression was even more serious than usual. “You are troubled, boy. It clouds your face like smoke.”

Crossing his own legs beneath him, he sat down beside her, waving off her offer of meat, broiled squash, or bread. “I need your wisdom and your advice, Fhastal, not your food.”

Nodding understandingly, she picked at a strip of gristle caught between her remaining back teeth as she listened to him tell of his encounter with the dying stranger on the beach. When he had finished, she sat silent in contemplation for a long moment.

“The stranger placed this burden on you as he lay dying?” When Ehomba nodded, she responded with a terse grunt. “Then you have no choice.” Idly she fingered the lightly browned slices of squash in her bowl. “Are you or are you not a man of conviction?”

“You know that I am, old woman.”

“Yes, I do. So we both know what this means. You must finish this man’s work. One who dies in another’s arms is no longer a stranger. Like it or not, he bound himself to you, and in so doing, his mission was bound to you as well.”

The man seated across from her sighed heavily. “That is also how I interpreted what happened, and it is what I feared. But what can I do? I am only one. This Tarin Beckwith had many warriors with him, and they were not enough to save him or allow him to succeed.”

Fhastal sat a little straighter. “They were not Naumkib. They were from outside the stable world.”

He was not persuaded. “They were still men. That is all that I am.”

“No it is not.” A gnarled fist the color of spoiled leather punched him several times in the upper arm. “You are Etjole Ehomba, herder, fisherman, father, warrior, and tracker. The best tracker in the village. Can you not track that which is not seen as well as that which is?”

“That is not so great a skill. Tucarak can do it, and so can Jeloba.”

“But not as good as you, boy. You know that you must do this thing?”

“Yes, yes. Because this Tarin Beckwith, whom I do not know, put it on me as he died. This is not fair, Fhastal.”

She snorted, her nose twitching. “Fate rarely is. If you want me to, I will explain it to Mirhanja.”

“No.” He uncrossed his legs preparatory to rising. “I am her husband, and it is my responsibility. I will tell her. She will not take it well.”

“Mirhanja is a good woman. Give her more credit. She understands honor and obligation.” She fumbled a slice of fried pumpkin into her mouth. “How old is your boy?”

“Daki will be fourteen years next month.”

Fhastal nodded approvingly. “Old enough to do a turn or two looking after the herd in your stead. Time he started doing something useful. The little girl will have a harder time accepting this, but her tears will pass.” Reaching down, she removed one of the many colorful fetishes that hung in bunches around her neck. It was a fine carving of a woman, done in the shiny gray horn of a stelegath. As he leaned forward, she slipped the cord from which it hung over his head.

“There! Now I can go with you. I have seen the Unstable Lands in my dreams, and now I can travel with you to see them in person.”

He smiled fondly as he studied the figurine hanging from its cord of sisal fiber. “You mean that this image can go with me.”

“Oh no, big handsome!” She cackled gleefully. “It is the image you are speaking to right now, the image that the village children make fun of and call names behind my back.” She pointed to the necklace. “That is the real me.”

For just an instant, he thought he saw something in her blind eye. Something flickering, and alive. But it was only a trick of the weak light, distorted by the cook fire.

“I will carry it as an amulet,” he assured her, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Fhastal meant well, but she was a little crazy. “So that it will bring me luck.”

“If you’d carry it somewhere else on your body, it might bring me luck.” She laughed madly again. “I hope that it will, Etjole.” She made shooing motions at him, like a mother hen guiding one of her brood of chicks. “Now then—go and see to your wife, so that you may lie with her before you leave. Make your farewells to your children. And be sure to stop by Likulu’s house. She and the other women will gather some small things to give you to take on your journey. Meet me tomorrow by the stone lightning and I will set you on your way. I can do no more than that.”

He straightened. “Thank you, Fhastal. With luck, I may be able to return this woman to her people and return home in a month or two.”

He did not believe it as he spoke it, but that did not matter. Fhastal did not believe it either. Without discussion, they chose to connive in the illusion.

II

MIRHANJA TOOK IT HARD, AS ETJOLE HAD KNOWN SHE WOULD. He tried to explain slowly and carefully, not forgetting to include the confirming conversation he’d had with Fhastal, reminding his wife again and again why he had to go.

“If I did not do this thing, then I would not be the man you married.”

Lying next to him, she reached over and hit him hard on the chest, a blow arising out of frustration as much as anger. “Better half a live man unconvicted than a whole one dead! I don’t want you to go!” She pressed tighter against him, her thigh curling over his flat stomach. She was nearly as tall as he, but in this she was not exceptional. The women of the Naumkib were famed for their statuesqueness.

“I have to. He who betrays a dying man’s obligation is himself dimmed forever in the sight of the heavens.”

“But you don’t want to go.” She kissed him ferociously on the neck.

“No,” he confessed as he turned to her in the bed, “I do not.”

“Tucarak would not go. Not even Asab.”

“I do not know that, and neither do you. But you do know me.”

“Yes, damn you! Why must you be such a good man? You are going to try and save a woman you have never met, of a tribe you do not know, from a land no one has ever seen, for a man you knew only for a moment as he lay dying. I know the depth of a warrior’s obligations, but can you not be even a little bit of a knave just for me?”

“You are so beautiful.” He was running his fingertips light as a summer breeze over her forehead and back down across her hair, smoothing out the curls, trying to smooth away her fears as well. But despite his best efforts, they kept springing back up again, just like the curls.

“And you are a fool!” She placed gentle fingers on his lower lip. “And I am cursed because that makes me a fool’s wife.”

“Well then, Mrs. Fool, at least we are well matched.”

“Promise me one thing, then.” She looked over at him, her eyes moist. “Promise me you will not stay away long.”

“No longer than is necessary—wife.”

“And that while you are gone, when the nights are cold and lonely, you will not lie with the beautiful women of far-off lands, but will remember that I am here, waiting for you.”

He smiled, and the love he felt for her poured out of him like water from a cistern. “No live woman could compare with even the memory of you, Mirhanja.” He covered her then, feeling the warmth of her surge up and around him, and she sighed beneath him even as he wondered when next he might feel a part of her again.

Early the following morning Daki stood solemnly watching, maturing in the moment, but Nelecha would not let go of the leather strips that hung down and over his woolen kilt. For so slim a child she had a lot of energy, all of which she put into crying “No, no!” over and over, until her eyes were red from the seeping and her throat was sore. Eventually, reluctantly, hopelessly, she let herself be gathered up in her mother’s arms.

He and Mirhanja had made their own farewell the previous night. Several of Ehomba’s closest friends among the men of the village had come to see him off. He did not tell them he was going to meet Fhastal or they would have laughed at him. As it was, there was no laughter. Only firm handclasps and sympathetic waving of hands as he turned and started off along the coast path. They understood why he was going, but he could tell that, tradition notwithstanding, several among them disagreed with it.

“Asab could make you an exception. As chief he can do that,” Houlamu had told him before he started on his way.

“Yes, but I cannot make myself an exception, and it is myself I have to live with the rest of my days,” he had replied.

“A short life it’s liable to be, too, in the Unstable Lands,” his friend had muttered.

“I will track my way clear,” he assured them.

“In the Unstable Lands? Where people are swallowed up by unreality, by things that should not exist?” Tucarak was dubious, his tone bordering on the spiteful. “Who comes back from those places? No one goes there.”

“Then how can you say that no one can come back?” Ehomba challenged them, but try as they might they could not think of anyone foolish enough to have attempted such a journey. Not in recent memory.

As he crossed the point of rocks that led to the seal and merape beach, he paused to pick up a handful of the wave-washed thumb-sized gravel. The merapes preferred the purchase the sandless beach gave their hands, and the seals, their friends, went along with this choice. Carefully he dumped the handful in a small wool sack and put it into a pocket, then buttoned the pocket shut. Homesick in some far land, he could pull out the pebbles and they would remind him of the village, his friends, his family. Few of his fellow warriors would have understood. Already burdened with sleeping roll and leather backpack, no one else would have chosen to add ordinary beach pebbles to the load.

He looked back. The village was already out of sight, but he could see the fires from individual houses rising into the pellucid sky. Sight of his home, reduced to smoke. What would congeal out of the smoke that lay ahead? He pushed on.

No one knew when the bolt of lightning had turned to stone and embedded itself in the bank of the creek, but there was no mistaking its shape, or the way it made everyone’s skin tingle and hair stand on end when walking over it. This phenomenon made it a favorite haunt of the village children, but none were running back and forth along its tormented petrified length today. It was too early for that kind of exploratory play.

As promised, Fhastal was waiting for him in front of the unnatural natural bridge. “Good morning, big handsome.” She took notice of his pack, his best overshirt and kilt, the necklace of colorful, hand-painted and -drilled beads strung on a leather thong around his throat, the elongated spear he was using for a walking stick. In leather sheaths slung across his back were two additional weapons: the short sword fashioned from the scavenged jawbone of a whale that had been carefully lined on both sides with the inch-long, razor-sharp teeth of a great white shark, and the slightly shorter sword the village smithy, Otjihanja, had forged from one of the hundreds of lumps of nickel-iron that had fallen from the sky in archaic times and now littered the plain to the southeast of the village lands. “Ready to begin the thing, I see.”

“As I must. As the covenant binds me to do.” Despite his determination, he was already having second thoughts. The dying Beckwith’s words were fading.

But try as the herdsman might to shut it out, the stranger’s face would not.

She grinned knowingly, showing an alarming paucity of front teeth. “You don’t have to do this thing, Etjole. No one in the village will think the worse of you if you change your mind now.”

“I will,” he replied laconically as he looked past her. Beyond lay the barren north coast, and farther still the river Kohoboth, that marked the southern edge of the Unstable Lands. “The warrior Tarin Beckwith said that the woman Themaryl would be taken to a country far to the northwest, across the great ocean. How shall I cross it?”

“You must keep traveling north,” the old woman told him. “Make your way through the Unstable Lands until you come to a place where the making of large boats is a craft, and take passage on one of them across the Semordria.”

He looked down at her. “Is there such a land?”

“In my youth I heard tales of such kingdoms. Places where people live by knowledge that is different from ours. Not greater, necessarily, but different. It is likely you may find passage there. If not”—she shrugged—“you may freely return home knowing that you tried your best.”

“Yes, that is fair enough,” he admitted, content with her conclusion. “Obligations do not wait. Best I be on my way.”

A gnarled hand grabbed his wrist. There was surprising strength in that withered arm. The one good eye stared up at him while the other seemed to turn in upon itself.

“You must come back to us, Etjole Ehomba. Among the Naumkib, it is you who stands the tallest. And I am not making a joke about your height.”

“I will come back, Fhastal. I have a family, and herds to look after.” Bending down to plant a kiss on the aged, parchmentlike cheek, he was startled when she shifted her face so that her lips met his. Her tongue dived into his mouth like a wet snake and he felt half the breath sucked out of him. As quickly as it had happened, she pulled away.

“Don’t look so surprised, big handsome.” The smile she gave him took forty years off her life. “I am old, not dead. Now then, be off with you! Discharge your obligation as best you can, and may the spirit of this Tarin Beckwith count itself supremely fortunate to have departed this world in your arms and not those of another.”

He left her there, waving atop the little ridge of rocks among the ghost trees as merapes squabbled for seafruit on the pebble beach below. He watched until she turned and disappeared, beginning the long hobble back toward the village. It would have been interesting, he found himself thinking, to have known Fhastal in her youth.

Better to devote his thoughts to the journey ahead, he told himself. Resolutely, he turned away from the ridge, the village, and the only life he had ever known, and set his gaze and his feet firmly on the path ahead.

He passed the rest of the sheltered cove with its barking seals and chittering merapes lying on the glittering gravel just above the steep shore break. One of the merapes threw an empty oyster shell at him, but it landed well short of his legs. Funny creatures, the merapes. They could be playful or vicious, depending on their mood of the moment. Not unlike people.

Beyond the village lay untold stretches of empty coast, for his clan inhabited the last mapped settlement this far to the north. Traveling to the south he would have been in familiar territory. Though Wallab and Askaskos lay a goodly distance down the coast, their people and those of the village knew of one another, and engaged in regular commerce and trade. Beyond those villages was the larger trading town of Narkarros, and still farther the villages of Werseba, Lanos, and Ousuben. The farther south one journeyed, the more fertile the lands became, the better the pastures. But someone always had to live on the fringes of the known world, his father had told him more than once, and that choice had fallen long ago to the Naumkib.

North of the village the grass gave way to sand and rock in whose bleak confines only the hardiest plants could eke out an existence. Few animals lived there, and those that did had been rendered permanently mean and ill-tempered by their inhospitable surroundings. Expecting to encounter nothing specific, Ehomba was therefore prepared for anything. Where potential strife was concerned, he retained an entirely open mind.

That evening a gale rose up off the sea, indifferent and unfriendly. It blew all that night and the next day, forcing him to walk with a scarf over his face and his eyes locked nearly shut in a permanent protective squint. The harsh wind-blown grains blasted his face and scored his arms. But he was not to be so quickly defeated, and certainly not by mere weather.

“Go back to the open sea!” he yelled into the gusts more than once, raising his arms and shaking his spear at the ocean. Off to his left, the great flat green-black sweep of the Semordria roared its challenge, vast and cold. “Leave me be! I am only a man just begun on his journey, and this is not fair!”

The waves exclaimed on the shore and not even seabirds or the Soft Ones answered, but when he emerged the next morning from his makeshift shelter of blanket and driftwood, the wind had stopped. Given up, he decided with satisfaction, only to be replaced by a cousin of gentler mien.

Had he been traveling inland, the dense fog in which he now found himself enveloped would have created many problems. As long as he followed the coast, however, he could not lose his way, not even in the thickest mist. Not with the echo of the surf to guide him. If he kept it always on his left, for some distance yet it would guide him due north.

Using scraps and splinters of driftwood still dry from having been buried in the sand, he struck sparks off a convenient rock with his sky-metal sword and made a fire. Blanketed by the fog, the morning was chill. Tea and jerky were his breakfast, the tea warming him, the jerky providing his mouth with exercise in the absence of conversation. He sat huddled beneath his blanket, an island of life and warmth in the gray mist, sipping his drink and slowly chewing on the stubborn strip of dried meat. The smoke from his fire and the steam from his cup fought for space with the fog. In the mist-engulfed silence, all that could be heard beyond the dying crackle of the fire was the sound of unseen waves coming ashore on the shrouded beach.

Done with the frugal but adequate meal, he rolled his blanket tight and resecured it to the top of his pack. There was no need to scatter the ashes from the fire or douse them with water—there was little here to burn. No danger of a grass fire in the absence of grass, or of a forest fire in the absence of a forest. Orienting himself by the sound of the surf, he resumed his trek northward.

He did not know how far the impenetrable sea fog extended. No one did. For as long as the Naumkib could remember, theirs had been the northernmost settlement of the southern peoples. The perpetual fogs kept them from expanding northward, and probably kept people living to the north from moving south. He knew that he had to keep the sound of the ocean always close. Lose it, and he might wander around in the fog forever—or at least until his food ran out.

His expression set, he lengthened his stride. The fog clung damply to him as if trying to hold him back, but he pushed relentlessly forward, scattering it with sheer determination. North was where he had to go, and nothing was going to keep him from getting there.