The trip south had been fairly mundane. We traveled at night, as Bregg promised. As the sky to the east lightened, the hunter found us an out-of-the-way place to hole up for the day. We all tried to sleep, but the heat and mugginess made that a difficult proposition at best. As the days passed, I thought that the heat might be growing less oppressive, but I wasn’t sure if that were the case, or if it was just all in my head. Sara couldn’t tell me much except that the outside temperature hadn’t changed much, and my body was acclimating to the heat; everything else was purely subjective.

Since we couldn’t sleep well, Aeld spent a couple hours each day instructing me on how to use the spirit energy I’d gathered.

“Normally, the first thing a loralvis learns, Freyd, is how to find their own spirit,” he told me. “This is vital to know before you begin drawing on the power of a bound spirit so that you don’t accidentally tap yourself for power.”

“Is that a bad thing?” I asked, mostly because someone without Sara would ask a question like that.

“Very bad,” he said firmly. “Your spirit drives and animates your body, Freyd. It’s also what shields you from the influence of other spirits. If you draw on it, you weaken yourself physically and mentally, plus you open yourself to spiritual invasion and attack. You can function with a crippled body, but not with a crippled spirit.”

“Won’t it heal, though?”

“Eventually, yes, but our spirits heal that sort of damage slowly. True spirits can regenerate by being exposed to their element or tapping the energies of the world around them; a mortal body interferes with that process. Any living thing heals spiritual damage at a fraction of the rate of a disembodied spirit.”

That wasn’t true for me, I knew. Thanks to Draining Aura, I healed that sort of damage at what was apparently a highly accelerated rate, and spirit melding let me restore myself at the expense of another spirit if I really needed it. I wasn’t about to tell him that, though, so I sat through his lesson and pretended to struggle to locate my own spirit over the course of a day of meditation.

Instead of actually doing that, I practiced analyzing and ranking spirits with Kadonsel’s help. Spirits abounded in the world around us—land spirits did, at least—and with some practice, Sara was able to extrapolate a rough equation that produced results matching the ojain’s estimates. When she’d finished, she showed me an updated list of my spiritual stats.

Spiritual Power

Native: 147/147

Hunt: 84/96 (Class N)

Storm: 40/43 (Class L)

Hemmorn: 19/19 (Class K)

Kadonsel: 99/99 (Class M)

Capacity: 105 Flow: 8

“I thought that Kadonsel said the storm spirit was Class H or I,” I observed.

“She did, but she doesn’t know how much energy you actually get from melding these spirits. I’m adapting the classes to match the energy output that I think Aeld would get from binding a spirit of the same class, which means they’re generally higher than they would be otherwise. If you’d analyzed the spirit before melding it, it probably would have been a class I or J.” She paused for a moment. “I’m also not sure if I’m using the same equations that they do, John. In fact, it’s very likely that I’m not, and their measurements and mine might disagree at the lowest and highest rankings. And I had to guess utterly for Kadonsel; her system obviously doesn’t include mortal spirits since you seem to be the only one we’ve found who can perceive them. I just assumed that her spirit was average.”

“Why bother, Sara?” I asked curiously. “Why can’t you just make your own system? I don’t much care if it matches what the Oikies use—or the Menskies for that matter. As long as it lets me judge the strength of a spirit, that’s all that matters, right?”

“Based on what, though, John? A ranking system has to have a basis, a fundamental unit, the way that Celsius scale we talked about before has the freezing and boiling points of water as bases for comparison.”

“Maybe set the spirit of the plain as the top end, a Z, and something tiny as the low end, an A,” I suggested.

“They’re two different spirit types, John. It would be like using the freezing point of oxygen for one end of the Celsius scale and the boiling point of iron as the other. You’d get numbers that didn’t make any sense. And if I just used the spirit under the Haelendi as a high end, your hunt spirit and storm spirit would basically be the same rank, A, and so would pretty much every other spirit around. If I used the tiniest spirit you’ve seen as a low end without an upper bound, the differences between your three spirits would be in the thousands, too vast to give you a real idea of how strong they are, and I’ll bet elder spirits would rank in the millions, with the Haelendi spirit in the trillions or more.”

“So, how is the Oikie system better?”

“It’s normalized, meaning it starts with a mean that’s what they consider to be an average strength spirit, and most of the spirits you’ll see are a rank close to that average. You won’t see many Class A spirits, if any at all, and you probably won’t see any Class U or higher ones—at least, hopefully.”

“Wouldn’t the spirit of the Haelendi be like that?”

“No, actually, because the system’s normalized to a spirit of that type. What counts as a Class M high spirit is very different from a Class M land spirit. What the class tells you is how powerful a spirit is compared to others of its kind. If you want to know how absolutely strong one is, look at the power level. That’s based on the weakest land spirit you’ve seen having a power rating of 1, so it’s a better indicator of pure strength. I even tweaked it to accommodate the fact that something like the hunt spirit has more potent energy than a land spirit does, so it’s more of an absolute rating.”

The best part about her system was that it improved my analyze ability, allowing me to better judge the spirits I saw—including the spirits attached to Aeld and the others.

Healing Spirit

Class L Close Spirit

Power: 35

Ice Spirit

Class K Land Spirit

Power: 8

Fire Spirit

Class M Land Spirit

Power: 21

…

Spirits of all sorts clung to the shaman. The healing spirit was his only close spirit, but he had a few beast spirits attached to him, a wind spirit, and an earth spirit. None of those were higher than Class M, average spirits, and none were as weak as his ice spirit at Class K, but there were quite a few of them. I, on the other hand, had three—four if you counted Kadonsel, which Aeld couldn’t. Apparently, that was something of a concern.

“You need another spirit or two, Freyd,” the shaman told me on the third day of traveling. “I think it’s time for you to try calling one again and claiming it.”

I’d already told him that I’d found my own spirit, and he’d moved me on to focusing on tapping the hunt spirit, not using the energy but just learning how to channel it and hold it within myself. Of course, I already knew how to do that thanks to Kadonsel, but I pretended that I didn’t. Besides, he did have some good advice on how to do it more easily, showing me how to contain the spirits within me so that I could tap them more readily and draw power more evenly and reliably. Now, four orbs of power floated inside me, three of them packed as densely as I could get them. I hadn’t done that to Kadonsel; it just felt wrong squishing her down like that.

“Plus, that’s another chance for you to observe how I do it, right?” I grinned at him.

“That, too, yes.”

“That’s fine. Any suggestions on what to call?”

“If we were in the High Reaches, I’d suggest ice or fire,” he said thoughtfully. “Both of those are useful there. Here in the Haelendi, though, just about anything that you don’t already have is going to be useful one way or the other.”

“You might try calling another advanced land spirit like the storm spirit, John,” Sara suggested.

“I don’t really want to fight another eagle, Sara,” I pointed out.

“Well, you did profit a decent amount from it,” she laughed. “But with the improved control you have—and my increased understanding of how spiritual energy flows—you should be able to call something without drawing a catastrophe in the process.”

“Fine with me. How do we do it?”

“Remember that idea you had about spirits being vibrations? I really think you hit on something, there. That storm spirit is complex, but breaking it down, it vibrates the same way I’d expect a combination of wind, water, and lightning to. If you tell me what you’d like, I think I can give you the pattern to call it—within reason, obviously.”

“I already have the storm spirit,” I mused. “That covers air, water, and lightning. I need fire, ice and earth, I guess. Could we try to summon something that’s all three?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it. I’d think that fire and earth together make something like lava, and I don’t think you want to accidentally cause a volcanic eruption here—not even a small one.” She fell quiet for a moment. “I think fire and ice might work, though.”

“Really? I thought they might cancel each other out.”

“It doesn’t look like it. None of the spirits’ patterns seem like they’ll destructively interfere with another’s. The result is a little complicated, but it should be doable. Here, try this.”

A pattern appeared in my mind, a specific series of vibrations in the spiritual field, and I quickly channeled a tiny wisp of power into it. I realized that I’d vastly overdone it the last time I called; I’d thought that was a small amount of energy, but compared to what I brought up this time, it was a fucking flood. I pushed the call out into the air, aiming it in all directions since I wasn’t sure what I’d be getting.

A few seconds later, the river beside us began to bubble and hiss, and a gout of steam erupted from it, swirling in the air like a hazy cloud. The mist hesitated for a moment before arrowing toward me, rocketing directly at me and swirling around my head. I winced at the sudden heat and humidity that struck my face and almost dropped the call before I realized that this was what I’d wanted. I analyzed it quickly and smiled at the result.

Steam Spirit

Class M Land Spirit

Power: 24

Without thinking, I reached out toward the hovering spirit, grabbing it in my mental fingers. It recoiled and tried to wriggle free, but I held it tightly.

“Good, you’ve linked with it,” Aeld said with satisfaction. “Now, will yourself into combat with it, Freyd. See yourself rising into the Spirit World to battle it. Know that it’s going to happen.”

I concentrated, unsure if this was going to work. I’d never entered spiritual combat without mixing blood before, after all. Still, I focused on the feeling of rising, my memories of the world of the spirits, and willed myself to be there. I felt a sudden wrenching sensation, and a moment later, I hovered above my body, gripping the squirming land spirit in my ephemeral hands.

It wasn’t even what I’d call a battle. The spirit lashed at me with blasts of heat and cold, but I endured them and ripped apart its spiritual flesh, channeling a touch of power from the hunt spirit to make it easier. I grew claws and fangs that shredded the steam spirit, and it dwindled rapidly in my grip, its essence repairing the damage it inflicted and sinking into my depths. At last, I crushed the last wisp of it and sank back into my body where a notification awaited me.

Spirit Melding: You have Melded a Steam Spirit!

Class N Land Spirit

Spiritual Power: 39

Benefits: Prowess +2, Vigor +2, Temperature Adaptation

Ability: Temperature Adaptation

Passive Ability

You instinctively tap the cooling and heating properties of your Steam Spirit to lessen the effects of temperature extremes.

I almost sighed with relief as a sudden chill rippled through me, cooling my body and countering the effects of the low-hanging sun. That was a useful adaptation, although I noted that it said “lessen,” not “negate.”

“That could take a serious power draw on your spirit, John, especially in someplace like the High Reaches or the middle of a fire. We could work out a spell to do that, but this ability is the best I can do while still using a negligible amount of power.”

I wasn’t about to complain; anything that helped me deal with the heat was a good thing, as far as I was concerned.

Of course, I couldn’t tell Aeld about my new ability, so I had to act as if I were dying from the heat during the day. Even with it, it was still much nicer to travel at night, anyway. The darkness meant that I saw very little of the Haelendi itself—the radiance of the spirit lights varied from night to night and even waxed and waned throughout each evening, but their blue radiance made it hard to judge what I was seeing as we walked along—but that was fine since I wasn’t there to sightsee anyway.

We kept the river to our right, and what I assumed was farmland stretched to our left. I made out what I thought were three different crops growing in those fields. One looked similar to the moss I’d seen in the High Reaches, although it glowed pale blue in the spirit lights and rose in curls and clumps as high as my knees. Another stretched in long, straight stalks that looked black under the blue gleam above us, with wide, thick leaves and small, dense-looking pods dotting the stems. The last grew in wide, flat bunches low to the ground, also black beneath the spirit lights with circular leaves that rose in a cluster, almost like cabbage or lettuce.

Animals roamed through the fields of moss, as well. Tall, shaggy creatures with long, flat heads, powerful bodies, and wide hooves shuffled over to investigate us as we passed. Shorter animals with dense fur and spiky horns curling up from their heads watched us placidly. Spindle-legged beasts as tall as us with long necks, small heads, and wide, barrel bodies stayed far from us, feeding quietly or leaping through the fields like deer. These, I assumed, were the domesticated creatures Sara mentioned. As she’d suggested, we didn’t see any signs of anything like dogs, though. Apparently, she was right that the Menskies didn’t want to keep creatures that might turn into deadly predators all of a sudden too close to them.

The one thing that we didn’t see much of was the Menskies themselves. The path from the High Reaches joined with a larger road running east to west after a day or so, and while that road showed lots of signs of travel, we didn’t see a soul as we crossed it. Our own road widened into something that I guessed a pair of wagons could pass each other on at that point, and I didn’t need my Tracking skill to see from the ruts that it was heavily traveled, but once again, we didn’t see a single person moving along it at night. It didn’t take long for me to realize why.

The first attack came on the second night, when a small pack of ishvarn erupted from a nearby boulder field and rushed us. We fought back, of course, and the creatures fled after we’d wounded several of them. Later that evening, a four-legged bird with large eyes swooped down on us, its soft wings silent in the darkness. It struck at Bregg once, then returned to the air, harassing us with diving attacks for fifteen minutes or so before soaring away into the night.

Those attacks continued fairly regularly as we traveled. Predators came out of nowhere, struck at us, and vanished into the darkness once wounded. Foxlike things two feet long with dark fur harassed us, nipping at our ankles. Raptors swooped from the sky, screaming defiance as they struck with claws and beaks. We even had a bird that looked like a large, black goose with four legs and wings six feet across lurch out of nowhere, honking madly and striking at Aeld with its heavy beak. In all cases, the things attacked us without provocation, and each time, they retreated once we showed ourselves capable of fighting back. Of course, some of the attacks were a bit more dangerous than others.

I ducked a massive paw swipe and thrust with Spiritual Strike. My spear shimmered and turned translucent as it slid through the large bear’s fur with ease, tearing into the spirit beneath. The bear roared and slammed its paws onto the ground, trying to squash me beneath them, but I slipped sideways and jabbed again, this time jamming the weapon into the thing’s side. It spun to face me, but I moved with it, jabbing and thrusting with my insubstantial weapon. Each strike left no visible wound behind but ripped into the bear’s spirit, slowing and weakening it. At last, the creature backed away, shaking its head and mewling pitifully, then spun and lumbered back into the darkness it came from.

I turned to see if Bregg needed help, but he had his own bear well in hand. He lacked my ability to directly strike at his foe’s spirit, but he didn’t seem to need it. He moved deftly, avoiding the beast’s powerful strikes, and bided his time, waiting for the moment to strike back. When he did, despite the fact that the bear’s fur was thick, coarse, and felt like stabbing into steel mesh, his spear plunged deep into its body, slipping past its defenses with ease. While I knew Bregg was skilled, I didn’t think he was that much stronger than me. Activating See Spirits, I realized that he wasn’t. The energy of one of the light purple spirits bound to him coursed through each blow, no doubt helping him get through the bear’s hide. The hunter couldn’t manipulate spirits the way Aeld could, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own tricks, apparently.

The second bear endured a half-dozen of these wounds before withdrawing and racing off into the darkness, following what I assumed was its partner or mate. It was larger than the one I’d fought, not by much, but enough to make me think one was male, and the other was female. I refrained from shaking my head as I watched the pair vanish back into the boulder field from which they’d emerged, no doubt to lick their wounds and heal—or die, I supposed. None of the wounds Bregg had inflicted looked all that serious, but infection was probably as big a danger on this world as Earth.

“Another breeding pair?” I asked with a sigh as I rested my spear on the ground and watched Bregg clean his.

“Most likely,” Aeld answered. “Mekilbyors are usually shy and avoid people. Those two must have a den with young in it nearby, and they were trying to drive us off.”

“If we’d backed away, would they have followed?”

“Maybe. It depends on what they consider their range.”

“They would have seen it as a sign of weakness,” Bregg growled. “Big predators like that only respect strength, Hemskal. If they don’t think you’re dangerous, then you’re prey as far as they’re concerned.” He looked at me a bit contemptuously. “Why didn’t you even try to wound it?”

“I didn’t want the thing to die in a few weeks from an infection,” I lied easily, not wanting to explain that I had damaged it, pretty badly, in fact. “If it has young, they’ll need someone to care for them. We couldn’t kill both of their parents, now, could we?”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

He snorted. “Mekilbyors aren’t as delicate as you seem to think, and the wounds I gave it weren’t all that serious. They’ll have closed in a day or two, and they’ll be healed in a week or so. Otherwise, I’d have had to hunt it down to keep it from getting a spirit infestation or possession and becoming a real danger.”

“Spirits can get into you through wounds?” I asked Aeld curiously.

“Sometimes, yes. Your spirit normally acts as a barrier to keep lesser spirits out of your body, but being gravely ill or badly wounded can weaken that defense and allows spirits to inhabit parts of your body.”

“I assume that’s a bad thing.”

“It is,” he chuckled. “Your spirit doesn’t just rest within your body, Freyd. It gives it life and animation. Other spirits—even beast or elder ones—can’t do that for your flesh. Whatever part of your body they take over quickly begins to die. As it withers, it weakens your spirit further, allowing the spirits to push deeper into you, until eventually…” He held his hands out to the sides.

“Can it be cured?”

“Of course. A letharvis can easily drive out the invading spirits, but even placing the infested person in a circle helps by blocking the outside spirits from gaining the energy they need to grow. That gives the victim a chance to regain some strength and push them out on their own. Unfortunately, if the infestation spreads far enough, even driving out the spirits can leave the victim badly crippled beyond what even healing can repair.”

“What do you do when that happens?” I asked.

“There’s little that we can do, really. They’re cared for, and we find roles for them within the valskab that their weakened bodies can handle.” He sighed. “Sadly, the most likely to be afflicted this way are hunters and warriors. They get hurt more than most, and it tends to happen far from a valskab where they could be quickly healed. More than one warrior has come back from battle infested and left crippled for life.”

“Does that match with what you know?” I asked Kadonsel silently.

“Yes, mostly,” she replied. “People who are badly wounded can develop spirit rot, but if it’s caught early, it’s easily healed by a Paravel, an ojain who specializes in healing. I’ve heard that people who are far from medical help, though, have cured a weak case by flooding the wound with water or applying ice or flame to it. I’ve never seen that happen, though.” She paused. “I’ve never heard of using a circle to stop one, but then, ojaini only use circles for our rituals, not for ordinary Henguki.”

“That might make sense, John,” Sara mused. “It sounds like the invading spirit is looking for a new place to inhabit, but a body isn’t a good one for it. Assuming it’s a land spirit, offering it a vessel of its type might encourage it to leave the body. Of course, that would only work if you knew the type of spirit inhabiting the wound.”

I’d learned over the last several days that while Aeld and Kadonsel were both knowledgeable about the spirits and how to use them, that knowledge was often incomplete or contradictory. Kadonsel insisted that it wasn’t possible to command spirits; they could only be bargained with, a fact I knew to be incorrect. Aeld, on the other hand, said that land spirits could only inhabit a vessel of their specific type, which Kadonsel knew to be false since her spirit orbs could hold any type of spirit. Most of the time, their information was similar, but one knew a bit more about the subject than the other—Aeld tended to know more about how spirits thought and behaved, while Kadonsel generally knew a little more about how they could be used. Sometimes, though, it was obvious that one’s information was only something they’d heard, while the other had firsthand knowledge of it. It occurred to me that if the two groups ever simply sat down and talked to one another, they’d probably both benefit a great deal, but I knew for a fact that wasn’t going to happen.

Another thing I’d learned during our journey was that the Menskies and Oikies absolutely loathed one another. Kadonsel would only refer to Aeld as a “savage” and refused to accept most of what he told me about the spirits. On the other hand, the few times I questioned the shaman about the differences between what he did and Henguki, he simply called the Oikie magic “profane” and “unclean” and refused to discuss it with me.

“The Oikithikiim imprison spirits, Freyd,” he’d told me firmly. “They snatch them against their will and bind them into their profane creations. I can only imagine the pain that must cause those spirits, but the ojaini don’t care; they seek only their own power, no matter what harm it does to the spirits.”

Kadonsel objected rather vocally to that, of course, pointing out that it was impossible to bind a spirit against its will, and that the spirits were happy to be in the spirit orbs, which helped them grow in strength much faster than being in a regular vessel would.

“The savages trick spirits into binding with their bodies,” she’d replied with some heat. “That sort of binding might give the savage more power, but it also floods the spirit with impure energy! They corrupt the ancients with their ways!”

Part of me wished I could point out that they could probably both find out if they were right by working together. Kadonsel and her kind assumed that the spirits they bound were happy, but since they apparently couldn’t communicate directly with those spirits, they didn’t know. A letharvis like Aeld could just ask the spirit and find out if he wanted. On the other hand, while Aeld could communicate with spirits, he couldn’t sense them or evaluate them as well as Kadonsel seemed to be able to. He probably wouldn’t know if one of his bound spirits was being corrupted by his personal energy, but an ojain apparently could in an instant with what she called a testing rod.

I wondered what would happen if they were each proven correct about the other. Given the way she seemed to almost worship the spirits, I was pretty sure that if Kadonsel found out that she’d been causing them pain every time she bound one into a spirit orb, she’d have been repulsed and probably would have sworn off Henguki. On the other hand, I had a feeling that Aeld and his people wouldn’t much care if they discovered that binding spirits tainted them somehow. The shaman seemed to have a very pragmatic attitude toward the spirits, seeing them as things to be respected and treated with care but not as objects of worship or even admiration.

“To be a letharvis, Freyd, one thing you have to understand is that to most Menskallin, the spirits are creatures to be honored but feared,” he’d explained to me during one of our training sessions. “And with good reason. Spirits can take offense at the tiniest things or ignore what might be a blatant insult to another. They can lash out once in retaliation and forget their anger, or they can haunt you for years seeking vengeance. There’s just no way to know, and even if you ask a spirit, they can’t explain. They’re just following their nature.

“That’s where the letharvisa come in. We can speak to the spirits, appease them, even drive them off or bind them if necessary. We can control them, at least as much as spirits can be controlled, and channel their natures into something positive. We stand as both bridge and guards between the Menskallin and the spirits, using them to strengthen and aid our people while keeping them from inflicting random harm.”

“You make them sound like useful but dangerous pests,” I’d responded.

“An apt description of most of them,” he chuckled. “Our main job is to keep them useful and mitigate that danger, more or less.”

Of course, I’d probably never know how they’d react. Even if I found out the truth of the matter, I couldn’t tell either of them. Neither of them would listen or believe the other, for one thing. They were determined to despise each other’s culture and magic, and I wasn’t going to change that anytime soon. For another, I couldn’t exactly explain to Aeld how I knew something like that, not without confirming Bregg’s worst fears about me—and those fears hadn’t eased in the slightest while we’d traveled.

“Is this normal?” I asked Bregg as I watched the bears vanish into the darkness. Part of me wondered if the hunt spirit was somehow calling predators again, although I thought that if it were, Aeld would have told me.

“It’s the season of young,” the hunter replied shortly. “Most of the creatures of the Haelendi just birthed their young, and that makes them territorial. They’re just trying to chase us off. If we were making this journey in a passage or so, we probably wouldn’t see anything.” He snorted. “Just another way this trip’s ill-omened.”

“Are there really that many predators around here?” I chose to ignore Bregg’s veiled insults as usual, although the man had been getting on my nerves lately.

“Where else would they be, Hemskal?” he scoffed. He pointed up into the sky, at the familiar bright star I recognized as Flikkur. “Flikkur’s Battle is over, and its Rise begins. The High Reaches are becoming impassible, and soon, the light will begin fading, making them impossibly cold. That forces all the creatures down to the Haelendi.”

“But isn’t this land all cultivated? It seems like the predators would avoid your farms and valskabs.”

“They go where the food is.” He pointed back toward the nearest field, one filled with the knee-high moss that looked blue in the spirit light. “Insects infest the fields, and the smaller creatures like snaerbigs, kullkarna, and tirkornas feed on them. The larger predators are drawn to the palressara and dathyra and hunt them, as well.”

“Don’t you drive them off?”

“We hunt them, yes. We don’t want to drive them off, though.”

“Why not?” I asked, honestly confused. “It seems like leaving ishvarns and such nearby is pretty dangerous.”

“The great predators serve a purpose to the valskabs, Freyd,” Aeld replied. “We raise the herds for meat, milk, and fur, but to do so, we have to set aside some of our lands to grow fethmish, the plant Bregg’s pointing at. It grows rapidly, even beneath snow, and makes excellent grazing for our herds, but we ourselves can’t eat it. Left alone, with a basically endless food supply, our herds would push beyond the boundaries of those fields. The predators cull their numbers and keep them in check. When they hunt, they leave most of the carcass behind, and those—as well as the carcasses of the predators we do hunt to keep their numbers manageable—become fertilizer to help our other crops grow. It’s a great cycle, and we Menskallin have to exist as part of it, not interrupt it, or we and the land will both suffer.”

Which basically meant, “shut up and suck it up,” as far as I could tell. I kept quiet, even though it didn’t make sense to me. The Menskies probably could have driven out the large predators and culled their herds themselves, either storing the meat and hides they didn’t need or preserving and trading it. More food meant more people, after all, and this land definitely seemed to have a low population density. Of course, that could just be because we were in the Haelendi’s equivalent of bum-fuck, the ass-end of nowhere, but most places I’d been settled along waterways like this river, not far from them. I suspected this region was fairly well settled, and it wasn’t long before I was proven correct.

The path led along the river, toward a series of stone mounds that flanked the road. These mounds were pretty common; I’d seen dozens of them on our trip, rising in clumps like this from the earth. Sara posited that they were more signs of volcanic activity, although she didn’t sound very sure about that. Kadonsel had no clue what they were, but then, she knew practically nothing about the Haelendi, and it seemed that ignorance was shared among most of her people. We’d never come so close to them, though, and I was a little curious to get a better look at them.

As we neared the mounds, I got a feel for their size and scale. Each mound was symmetrical, ranging from fifty to a hundred feet long, thirty or forty high, and about the same distance in width. They looked almost like capsules half-buried in the ground, covered with some sort of plant that grew thickly along the sides and top, obscuring most of the stone beneath. The whole thing looked almost too perfect, like it had been built rather than a natural creation.

I blinked in surprise and readied my spear as the moss on the side of the nearest mound twitched, shifted, and suddenly parted like a curtain. I braced myself, ready for another creature to attack, but then relaxed somewhat as four Menskallin appeared and walked toward us along the path. The newcomers looked to have darker-colored and thinner fur than we did, and while they weren’t quite as large as Bregg, they were bigger than me and looked more muscular. Leather armor draped their bodies, with small plates of copper riveted to the metal as reinforcement, and their spears bore bronze heads. I quickly scanned one and had to suppress a nod; these were fighters, not hunters, and it showed.

Unknown Menskallin

Warrior, Level 8

Estimated Physical Stats

Prowess: 26 Vigor: 24 Celerity: 21 Skill: 22

Most powerful Bound Spirit

Class M Beast, Power: 29

“That’s new, Sara.”

“I thought it would be useful, John.”

The new arrivals were stronger and tougher than the hunters had been in general, but not as nimble or deft. The way they moved in step and their improved weapons and armor suggested that they were soldiers, a guess reinforced by Sara’s analysis. That made the stone mounds some sort of barracks or garrison guarding the road, and I felt a touch of nerves in my stomach. Depending on if the soldiers were quartered closely together, those two mounds could hold a hundred of the soldiers easily, and other mounds could serve as mess halls, supply dumps, and even officer quarters assuming the Menskallin had such a thing. If they were here to cause trouble, I didn’t know what the three of us could do about it.

The soldiers moved into formation across the road, blocking it completely. Movement up above caught my attention, and I glanced up to see two more of the soldiers atop the nearest mound, each holding a pair of much shorter spears that were probably meant for throwing. The mounds made a decent platform, too steep and slippery with moss to easily climb and presumably sturdy enough that a charging enemy couldn’t simply bash through them. With the ranged throwers up top, the soldiers could hold an enemy at bay with their long spears while those above showered death upon them. An intelligent commander could negate that advantage, of course, by having skirmishers climb the mounds and sending flanking troops wide around them to attack from behind, but that wasn’t something we could do, at least not now that we’d been spotted.

Bregg paused just out of spear reach, and Aeld stepped to the front, gazing at the soldiers in silence. I waited, suspecting that they were having quite a conversation that I still couldn’t hear. Fortunately, I didn’t really need to hear it to get the gist. I could read everyone’s body language just fine. Bregg looked a little aggressive but not ready to attack, as if he were trying to be intimidating or were upset about something. The warriors stood defensively, their bodies closed off and their weapons between them and us. Aeld looked conciliatory, almost pleading; he wanted something from the soldiers, and they weren’t willing to give it to him.

After a minute or so, Aeld sighed and stepped back, while Bregg moved away with a disgruntled expression. The soldiers parted, moving to the sides of the road, and Bregg passed between them, with Aeld trailing. After a moment, I followed behind, moving cautiously between the soldiers. They all watched me as I passed, their bodies tense and taut. I could practically feel the tension in them, and that bled over into me. I held my spear loosely but ready to bring to bear, and my eyes flicked back and forth between the two groups of soldiers and the ones perched above us. My brain quickly ran through what I would do if they attacked me, plotting strategies and anticipating how they might react and counter me. My body relaxed as I slipped into combat mode, ready to move in any direction and respond to any attack.

The soldiers moved back, no doubt sensing my readiness to fight and increasing the distance so that their longer spears would give them an advantage, but none made a move to actually attack. They simply watched as we passed through the stone mounds, closing ranks behind us and following us at a distance. I kept an eye on them over my shoulder, but they simply trailed along until we left the cluster of domes and walked along the open plain once more. The soldiers stopped there and watched us for several minutes before turning back and vanishing into the domes.

I released my breath as the tension flowed out of my body, and I turned back to face the others. “What was that all about?” I asked curiously.

“That was Valskab Flothmathur,” Aeld replied in a voice that, while subdued, held a minor undercurrent of anger within it.

I glanced backward. That was a valskab? I’d thought it was a military encampment of some sort, one built to watch the road. “You mean, a whole valskab lives in those stone domes?”

“The skyols are the surface dwellings of the valskab, yes, Freyd. However, much of the valskab exists below the ground, in tunnels and chambers linking the skyols.” He paused. “I’d hoped to take shelter here for a few days to let us finish our adaptation and then procure transportation to Aldhyor. However, it seems that won’t be possible.”

I glanced at him and at Bregg’s stiff posture and understood. “Because of me?” I guessed.

“Yes, Freyd,” he said with a sigh. “They’re—uncertain about you, and unwilling to admit you into their valskab. I tried to convince them, but they refused to set aside their concerns.”

“With good reason,” Bregg grumbled.

Aeld flashed the man a look that was both angry and exasperated. “Perhaps they would have allowed us, Bregg, if you’d remained silent and let me talk, as I asked you to!”

“You weren’t telling them what they needed to know, Letharvis,” the hunter replied flatly. “You didn’t tell them who he really is.”

“And who, exactly, am I, Bregg?” I asked, trying to hide my irritation with the man. It sounded like his interference had cost us transportation, which would probably be faster than our feet, and being able to travel without dealing with animal attacks.

“You’re a rogue loralvis, Hemskal,” he growled in reply. “Part of no valskab. You appeared from nowhere in the middle of the High Reaches, and you have no good explanation for where you came from or how you know what you do—and why you don’t know what you should. Their valskab needed to know that, so they could decide if they wanted to risk bringing you within their borders. They didn’t.”

“They should have, just based on my word as a letharvis,” Aeld spoke, his voice crisp and maybe a little annoyed. “At least, they should have given us one of the guest skyols as shelter. They were nervous about something, something they didn’t want to share with those outside of the valskab.”

“I didn’t think you could hide things from people in a valskab.”

“Within your own valskab? No, you can’t, Freyd. The level of understanding between one another is too deep. With those of another valskab? It’s possible, although it’s clear that’s what you’re doing. I could tell they were withholding information from me, but not what.”

“So, the savages aren’t as unified as they claimed to be,” Kadonsel observed ironically. “They struggle amongst themselves, the same way everyone else does.”

“True, but so far, we haven’t seen them killing one another,” I pointed out.

“It’s inevitable. Conflict is the nature of this world.”

I didn’t argue; I simply followed along as Bregg led us away from the river. We stopped near a pile of rocks stacked about twice our height, and I looked at Aeld curiously.

“What’s going on?”

“While the valskab didn’t offer us their hospitality, they did agree to let us camp nearby until we’re capable of traveling in the daylight,” he explained. “They recommended this location. It’s within the protection of their patrols, so we can rest here in some safety, at least.”

“Better than nothing, I guess,” I sighed.

We waited while Aeld shifted and molded the pile of stones into the shape of a shallow cave, one that would give us some shade from the sun. We laid out our furs, but none of us were really tired, as we’d been resting—sort of—all day. I walked away from the pair and sat down on a large boulder, looking up at the shifting, undulating lights in the sky. They were particularly bright that night, and their patterns mesmerized me, helping to calm my racing thoughts.

“Kadonsel, if we could somehow get into Almella,” I asked quietly, “how hard would it be to move around freely?”

“The truth? It would be very hard, if not impossible. The only Redeemed Elders allowed to travel freely are those sponsored by one of the high clans or the Kungas himself. Those travel with large escorts; no Redeemed Elder ever travels alone.”

“Are they prisoners, then?”

“No, of course not!” She paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was thoughtful. “Although, I suppose in a manner of speaking, they are—but not in the way you mean. The Redeemed Elders are prisoners of their value and importance. They know and understand things about the spirit world that we don’t, and that knowledge and wisdom is an important advantage to any clan that has an Elder in their midst. Because of that, they’re often targets for clan raids, so they’re kept safe and protected. If they were allowed to travel freely, they’d be vulnerable.”

“So, I’d either have to sneak around, or I’d have to pretend I had a powerful sponsor.”

“Yes, but that second idea probably wouldn’t work. You’d be snatched up by the first clan that found you. Elders who travel have a large escort for a reason: it’s much harder to hide the fact that you captured the Elder if you have to kill a hundred soldiers to do it.”

I grimaced. “What about traveling to Mellung and taking a ship?”

“You’d have the same problem. The moment you stepped off that ship into an Almellan city, you’d be fair game for whatever clan finds you. Besides, I don’t even know if you could move around freely in Mellung in the first place.”

That made heading off into Almella on my own a fairly untenable proposition. However, I knew that at some point, Bregg’s issues with me were going to cause me just as many problems, maybe even worse ones. If he convinced the wrong people that I was a danger, they might try to capture or kill me just to be sure. Hell, it’s what I would do if I even suspected that someone was a threat—as I kind of felt that Bregg was.

And that was the problem. I didn’t know that Bregg was a threat, but I suspected it, and I had to act on that suspicion. I might be able to kill the hunter, negating that potential danger, but that would almost certainly alienate Aeld, and it might cause every other valskab to hunt me or at least drive me away from them. Plus, I might not be able to kill him, at least not in a one-on-one fight, and that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

What I needed was to negate Bregg’s potential danger, and the best way to do that would be to give him what he wanted. The time had come for us to part ways. The day’s heat no longer bothered me, so I could travel freely, and alone, I could probably talk my way into another valskab—or at least into getting directions to this Aldhyor place. This was a good time for it, too; I could travel day and night if need be while Aeld and Bregg were limited to nighttime travel, still. Plus, if I left, they could just head back to that valskab behind us and rest there until they were ready to return home.

That just left exactly how to do it. I could just walk away, but I’d be leaving my pack and supplies behind, which didn’t seem like a great idea. If I went back and grabbed those, I’d have to explain that I was leaving, and while Bregg would be happy, Aeld wouldn’t. No, I’d have to wait until it was my watch and slip away then.

A dark shape moving nearby caught my eye, and I tensed and grabbed my spear, ready to deal with an attack. I relaxed as I realized that the shape was just an animal, one of the domesticated ones I’d seen over the past few days. It reminded me of a shaggy, long-haired ox, to be honest, with a curving nest of horns atop its head. It was big, as tall as me at its shoulder and longer, with a wide, heavy body and relatively short, solid legs. Seeing it reminded me that Aeld had mentioned transport, and one of the domesticated beasts I’d seen reminded me of a horse. Maybe I could steal one of those and ride it south; that would be faster and easier than walking or running, I felt certain...

“John,” Sara’s concerned voice distracted me from my musings. “Something’s wrong.”

I frowned and refocused, looking around. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Bregg and Aeld were still behind me at our little camp, no doubt arguing about how they’d handled the valskab. The cow-like creatures were moving around in the field, maybe seeming a little restless. At last, I glanced up, and my eyes widened as I understood what Sara was talking about.

“Aeld!” I called out quietly. When the shaman didn’t respond, I repeated the call, a little louder.

“What, Freyd?” he finally said, his voice irritated.

“You need to come see this, I think.”

I heard the shaman sigh, and he walked out from behind the shelter, his annoyance plainly visible on his face as he looked past me at the now-milling animals. “What?” he demanded. “Those are kottyara, Freyd. They’re harmless.”

“Not them,” I replied, pointing upward. “That.” The letharvis looked up, and his expression shifted to one of astonishment as he stared upward into the sky.

The night sky—boiled.

Honestly, that was the best way that I could describe it. Overhead, the spirit lights had gone crazy. Rather than slowly shifting and undulating, the ghostly radiance twisted and writhed almost frantically, bubbling up and cascading down only to vanish before hitting the ground. Spears of light of varying colors flashed through the sky, lances of red, gold, and green that raced into the distance or slammed into the ground in bursts of illumination. The display looked utterly insane.

A hoarse cry from in front of me grabbed my attention, and I shifted my gaze to the herd of cow-things I’d been watching earlier. The beasts huddled together around the largest creature, the one that had been eyeing me earlier. A dim, barely seen glow pulsed around them, and as I watched, the big bull lifted its head and brayed loudly, its bellow rough and low, almost like a bovine scream of pain. I blinked as I stared at it; a trick of the light made it seem like it was getting bigger somehow. I blinked my eyes rapidly, then looked at it again; it was definitely bigger.

“Aeld, any idea what’s happening?” I asked.

“No, Freyd,” he said, his voice shaking and almost sounding on the verge of panic. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“What about those?” I asked, pointing at the cattle.

“I told you, Freyd, they’re called…” The shaman’s eyes grew wide, and his voice trailed off as he saw the rapidly swelling beast, and its similarly growing kin around it. “Undottya!” he whispered hoarsely, his voice rising. “Bregg! Undottya!”

The largest beast stepped forward, shaking its head, and focused on the screaming letharvis, staring at us with silver-glowing eyes. Its head lowered, and it pawed the ground aggressively, its feet dragging lines of fire across the earth that sputtered and died quickly. It was much bigger than me, now, and its fur fell swiftly off to reveal rough skin that glowed eerily. The horns on its head had lengthened and now formed a twisting, thorny crown extending three feet to each side, studded with spikes and prongs. It had looked placid and docile before; now, it seemed angry and a little terrifying. It snorted again, pawed the earth once more—and charged, shaking the ground beneath it.

As I braced myself for its rush, my stomach began to twist and flip, its gyrations matching the sky above. Whatever was happening, it was related to my reason for being in this world. Now, I just had to survive long enough to figure out what the hell was going on.