“Sure are!” I called back.
“I’m going to try and teleport up above this storm!” Karalti was struggling to keep her wings from bending over as gusts of wind slashed at us, driving her toward the rocks. “Annnnd... brace!”
The world inverted to a black point, where we hung bodiless for a few seconds before erupting into a clear starry sky. Karalti pumped her wings, her chest swelling as she began to compensate for the thin air. We were just shy of 18,000 feet—only three thousand feet under her maximum flight ceiling.
“Where to from here?” I asked Vash.
“Let me see…” Vash pulled out a compass, using it to orient himself. When he was facing the right direction, he used his thumb and forefinger to square it with the stars and moon: a difficult job, as Karalti bounced on the massive turbulence spiraling up from the stormclouds below. “And… there. I’m almost certain that’s the right way.”
A golden pathing indicator appeared in my mini map. Karalti veered in that direction, alternating beating her wings and gliding. It was truly freezing up here: fine branching trees of frost formed on the front of my helmet, and turned to condensation on Karalti’s burning hot scales.
“You okay?” I asked, resting one hand on the back of her neck.
“I’m fine as long as I keep moving.” She sounded like she was talking through gritted teeth—uncomfortable, but determined as she labored toward our destination.
I glanced at her stamina. She was already a quarter down. “I don’t like it, but I think you need to burn another Teleport spell to get us forward. As soon as we spot a good landmark, warp to it. We’re dealing with this rough weather better than we did four levels ago, but it’s sucking your stamina like crazy.”
“Tell me about it.” She darted through a particularly vicious lash of air, pulling her wings in and teetering to the side. “Help me spot a landmark and stare at it, like how we did in Lahati’s Tomb: try and keep it in your mind’s eye as I enact the spell. The ice is in my eyes, and I can hardly see.”
Frost was rapidly creeping in around the edges of my visor, but I could still see well enough to cue my darkvision and zoom in on the horizon. There, the clouds broke against the sides of the mountains, and the land gave way to narrow, scalloped plains. I used Karalti’s horns like an iron sight, focusing on our intended position. “Okay, and… go!”
She enacted the spell, and I kept the image of our destination in my mind as clearly as I could. The teleport seemed to stretch on and on... and just when I started to worry, we burst out into clear, arid air. The plateau rolled out ahead of us: starkly arid and eerily beautiful, like the surface of Mars. The moon lit seemingly endless field of swelling, snow-covered hills. It was -42 degrees out here, double the negative temperature I could withstand thanks to Iron Body, and just under what Karalti could reasonably tolerate.
Vash reached out to grip my arm. His expression was stricken.
“By Burna’s big black arse,” he said, hoarsely. “I’m home.”
I gazed over the plains as Karalti descended, and felt my heart swell. As the dragon’s shadow cut over the ground, it stirred a herd of wooly rhinos into a restless, thundering charge. A huge flock of white vultures ringed a glacier-blue lake, roosting beside water that reflected the moon like quicksilver. A narrow icy river trickled down the length of a fractalline ravine far below, zig-zagging its way toward the distant ocean. It was the kind of place you found in Iceland, or parts of Tibet. For some strange reason, the sight of it filled me with a deep sense of homesickness: a longing for a place I’d never been.
“Stay sharp, Dragozin.” Vash urged, as he pulled his goggles off and unwrapped the scarf he’d bound around his face. He spoke Tuun now, his voice gruff and unusually serious. “We’re nearly there. I know not what we’ll find behind those hills.”
“Where is everyone?” I asked him.
“After thirty years, with the pass to the Churvi Territories and Bas beyond that blocked by landfill? Who knows? There were never that many people up here to begin with,” he said.
“The other Tuun didn’t help you and Saaba when you were kids?” I saw what I thought was a Tuun camp, with darkened yurts and fences, but when I blinked, there was nothing but rocks and weird, creeping shadows.
“No. They drove us away.” Vash was expressionless now, gripping the saddle with both fists. “And I hold no grudge against them for it. They were right to do so. The death of my family was tragedy enough: if the plague had spread from clan to clan, everyone would have been lost.”
“I don’t see anyone,” I remarked. “No fires, no houses… and we can literally spot for miles out here.”
“I know,” Vash said quietly. “And I have a bad feeling about it, too.”
There were no signs of life—human or animal—as we closed in on the quest marker. We didn’t see anything else until we were over the hills—and found ourselves in a pocket of warmer air that flushed over us like an exhaled breath. Sprawled below us was a huge Tuun village. There were least sixty yurts down there. They were arranged in concentric circles that radiated out from one central camp. Dozens of fires lit the night sky. There were sheds and corrals, and herds of sleeping camels, goats, and aurochs standing in their pastures. The air shimmered like a mirage where the heat rising from the bustling village met the chilly ceiling of sky above.
“Well, that explains things.” My gut relaxed as Karalti dipped a wing, giving the settlement a wide berth. “The clans came together for a moot.”
“Yeah! That’s a good thing, right?” Karalti chirped. “If people moved here, they must have put your family to rest. They wouldn’t live in a place that’s haunted.”
“That is no trade moot. That is a town… but why is in the same place that my family made their winter camp?” Vash stared at the tents and corrals in disbelief. “Perhaps some monks and priests found their way here after all. People wouldn’t live here if the dead weren’t put to rest.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” I zoomed my vision in one of the cooking fires. There was a group of six people around it, clapping and singing along with a man playing an erhu, a long-stemmed, two-stringed fiddle with a small box belly. “Looks like there’s people still awake. We can talk to them, see if we can find out who’s in charge?”
Vash nodded. He clenched and unclenched his jaws, the muscles popping in sharp relief as Karalti coasted down in a gentle glide, and landed behind a hill not too far away. We wasted no time in vaulting down.
“It’s too warm,” Vash muttered, already shucking his coat down to his waist, where he wore it like a thick woolen kirtle. “It’s like summer. There’s no snow around this camp. The herd should be living off snow and having to scratch for roots by now, but look.”
He pointed toward the short, tough steppe grass that grew out of the hard ground all around us.
“Can mages control the weather, out of curiosity?” I shucked my own coat off, and folded it into my Inventory. We were well within my temperature limits here. On the ground, it was only -10 C: about 14 F.
“There are no mages here, I guarantee it. Our people have no love of sorcerers.” Vash sniffed the air, looked up and down, then kicked a rock away from him. “If they are herders like the ones I knew, they will be glad to see a Baru and his apprentice. We’ll have teeth to pull, medicines to administer, camels to soothe. How does that sound, Karalti?”
“I dunno if I’ll be any good at soothing camels right now,” Karalti replied, trotting along beside me. “I’m about two or three days off my next heat, and all I can think about right now is food. It’s hard to soothe something when it knows you want to eat it.”
We followed a short, overgrown rocky trail to the first of the signal fires. There were no guards other than shaggy Tuun Mastiffs who ran toward us, barking with their hackles raised. Children played by the fire, squealing with laughter as they acted out scenes with straw dolls shaped like hookwings and wooly rhinos and sabretooths. One man was dozing in front of the flame
s, his coat hanging off one shoulder, his arm resting in the open front of his jacket like a sling. Three older women sitting at a table in an open tent ate roasted barley flour and tea, talking and laughing. A smith worked an open forge, his jacket hanging open around his waist like Vash’s.
“Hi there, boy.” I crouched down and cautiously extended my hand to one of the dogs, an enormous beast with dirty white fur and big sagging jowls. He edged forward, sniffing curiously—but as his nose touched my fingertips, a small jolt of static snapped between us. He yelped and backpedaled, his tail between its legs, then put his head down and skulked away. The other dogs began to bark furiously, but didn’t stop us as we pushed into the camp. A few people looked up to see what the fuss was about, but no one came forward to greet us. They just kept on doing what they were doing.
Vash strode over to the forge. The blacksmith sung under his breath as he worked, rhythmically striking a hot piece of iron over and over again, shaping it into... something. I wasn’t actually sure what he was working on, because it didn’t resemble anything in particular.
“Hail, forgemaster.” Vash called to him gruffly. “I am Vash Dorha, a Brother of the Dark Moon come to offer aid and request hospitality. To whom do I speak?”
“A baru?” The man jerked his head to the east, and continued hammering. “Matriarch’s tent is that way.”
Karalti and I looked at one another. As healers and midwives, baru were generally greeted with open arms in a Tuun settlement.
Vash crossed his arms. “I gave you my name. What’s yours?”
“Jorgo.” Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Your clan name is Jorgo?” I asked.
The smith paused, his brow knitting in irritation. His iron had cooled, and was now too stiff to continue shaping.
“Yes, you skinny piece of fox shit. My name is Kun Jorgo. The matriarch’s tent is that way!” He clamped the iron in tongs and shoved it back into the fire. His young apprentice, a boy who had yet to grow his hair long enough to braid, began to work the bellows of the dung-fired forge.
“Clan Jorgo does not live here. This is Dorha ancestral land.” Vash’s brows furrowed. “Why are your clan this far north?”
The smith rounded on him. “Do you expect me to give you an answer to everything? Do you want to know why the moon rises, and goats piss in their beards?”
“Only Tangur knows all things. I want to know who the matriarch of this camp is,” Vash said. “Tell me, and I’ll be more than happy to leave you to your business.”
Kun Jorgo aggressively pulled his burning whatever-it-was from the coals. “Who else? Katya Jorgo. Talk hospitality with her, and leave me to my work.”
“Jeez, someone really needs a snack and a nice lie down,” Karalti remarked, sniffing the air beyond the forge. “It smells really nice here! Someone’s steaming momos.”
“You just ate a whole bunch of dumplings, Tidbit.” I rubbed the back of my right hand. The Mark of Matir was aching.
Karalti nodded. “Yeah, but these are DUMPLINGS we’re talking about. There’s always room for more.”
“Come on, you two. Let’s leave old ironsides here to jerk himself off with his tongs.” Vash seemed unfazed by the smith’s rudeness, strolling on past us on his way in the direction he’d indicated. “Strange to think the Jorgo Clan came all this way.”
“How many clans lived here?” I fell into step with him on one side, and Karalti caught up to him on the other.
“Eight. About a hundred people, give or take. The Laanzin are the biggest, or were. Jorgo Clan lands are on the northern lip of the plateau, far away from other people. For as long as my family knew them, they liked it that way. The grazing in their territory must be scarce… that is the only reason they would be here.”
“Yeah...” I trailed off uneasily, glimpsing the women in the open tent pause in their conversation, dark eyes tracking us as we passed by the cringing dogs. I wanted a weapon in my hand, but resisted the urge. To even hold a weapon inside a Tuun camp was out of bounds, like pulling out a pistol and playing with it in a crowded cafe. If you entered someone’s tent, you didn’t have to knock, but you did have to leave your weapons outside—and shake the host’s cheese-making bag that hung beside every door. No one here was carrying. The men we passed were unarmed. A few spears and bows were set outside of tents. It looked… well… pretty fucking normal.
Vash led us through the rows, shoulders hunched. Music drifted out ears: the mournful wavering song of a horse-head fiddle, accompanied by a small chorus of women singing a Tuun chorus—one chanting in a deep snarl as the others sung in melodic tones over and under her:
Kharkuralt’ Nar teygsh tuul agha khum;
Karankhul bol tüünii, büül gey’emshun;
Gol mörnii vaschan, gorkhinii vaschan,
Narda Vashkini,
Tüüna sudsandaa vas seider shuun,
Khab tüünii gargaduul, oder tuul neriig büü.
The shadow of the Mother over this sun-struck plain;
Dark is her countenance, no remorse or shame,
Washer of the riverbeds, washer of the streams,
The Mother of Waters;
Salt water in her veins.
Sing for her blessings, but never say her name.
‘Narda Vashkini’, the Mother of Waters, was a minor goddess of rain and storms. I turned to ask Vash if he knew what the hell this was about and saw that he was unusually pale. The skin of his face was tight. “Uhh… Vash?”
“That song.” He reached out to the edge of the nearest yurt, pinching one of the seams. It was as real as anything in Archemi, rustling his fingers as he squeezed. “I remember my sister pulling her clothes off and singing a song like this, one she’d made up. Mother ran to her and grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her to the yurt as she scolded her for invoking the Mother of Waters when we needed sun and clear skies for the herd. And Tsunda...”
It was almost as if a record scratched. The woman halted mid-note, the fiddler stopped playing, and all four of them turned to stare at us.
“Oh! Strangers!” The older woman, the one who had been providing the deep throaty rumble, smiled beatifically at us. “Come, come... join us for a time. We can make room by the fire.”
“Thanks, but we’re looking for the matriarch.” I stepped forward and lay may hand on a bale of barley straw, testing it to see if it was as real as I hoped it was. The dried grass crackled under my fingers, and the sweet, loamy smell of hay mingled with the scents of food and leather and smoke. “What was her name again?”
“Jorgo Katya,” Vash rumbled.
The old lady’s smile faded. “Jorgo Katya? No, no. This isn’t Jorgo land. Perhaps you’ve travelled to the wrong camp, holy brother? The Jorgo are to the north of here.”
“Then who stewards the land?” Vash rolled his shoulders, the scars of his face twisting as he frowned.
“Why, this is Laanzin territory.” The woman smiled. “The Matriarch is my sister-in-law, Laanzin Saika.”
Karalti and I exchanged glances.
“Is that so?” Vash scratched his cheek. “Well… thank you, auntie. I guess we’ll go see her, then.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young man who was passing by do a doubletake and stop, staring. “Hey… Vash? Vash, is that you?”
Vash turned as the man broke for us at a jog. He was a handsome, athletic guy, with the long hair and red-wrapped braids of a warrior. Vash regarded him with suspicion, then recognition, then astonishment. “Temu?”
“Gods, I thought I recognized those scars! You’re alive! I can’t believe it!” Temu ran forward and caught Vash’s metal-clad hand in his own, squeezing it, then pulled him into a stiff hug.
Vash seemed to not know how to react or what to do. “Temu, what has happened here? Why are the Laanzin and Jorgo clans living here, of all places?”
“Well... why not?” Temu hadn’t let go of Vash’s hand. “I never thought I’d see you again. But who are these people?”
Vash sh
ook his head, and twisted to free his fingers from the other man’s grip. “You didn’t answer me, Temu. This land was stricken by plague. My family died here. Mother, father, all my uncles. My sister. The herders.”
“Died? What are you talking about?” Temu let out a nervous laugh, obviously confused. “No one died. After they sent you away-”
“No one sent me away.” Vash took a wary step back from him. “And you... you do not look even half as old as me. How many summers are you now?”
“Summers?” Temu’s lips parted as he looked back and forth between us, then back to Vash. “Are these two your caretakers? From the temple?”
“They are not. Answer me, Temu. How old are you now?”
He laughed it off. “Why does it matter? I don’t remember how many summers have passed. I stopped counting years ago, after I completed my first hunt.”
Vash rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose. And me? I was starting to get a creepy vibe. We were caught between the three women, the fire, and Temu. Wordlessly, Karalti and I took up defensive positions around our friend.
“Temu,” Vash said slowly. “I turn forty-one this year. You were a boy of thirteen when Saaba and I left the plateau. You stand before me now, in the flesh, but you can’t be more than twenty-five years old.”
The young man’s smile faded to a concerned frown. “Please forgive me, Vash… I know they sent you to the monastery to get you help but… are you still insane?”
“I was never insane, Temu.” Vash went very still, his hands resting loosely by his sides. “There was only one member of my family who was mad, and that was Tsunda.”
I jumped as a sudden wind blew through the circle of yurts, rattling the doors in their frames. The gust knocked a bow off its hook, sending the weapon clattering to the hard ground.
Temu’s expression fell. “Vashnya... don’t say such things. Your sister has struggled with so much since you were sent away, but... if you go to the center of camp, you can see her. Maybe she’ll forgive you, after all this time.”
“Forgive ME?” Vash balled his fists, fingers clicking against the metal surface of his palms.
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