by Kevin Hearne
“Full of wonders,” she replied, beaming at me.
“I’m so glad you made it here in time. We were just about to leave on a scouting mission.”
“Yes, if we could get on with it,” Pak Sey ben Kor said. Pen’s face fell at his rudeness, but I caught her eye, kept a polite grin on my face, and gave her a tiny shake of the head to tell her not to respond.
“Certainly, benmen. Let’s be on our way.”
I set a brutal pace and told them to keep up, a command with which they had considerable difficulty. They were not used to exerting themselves, having spent so much time dangling on branches and talking rather than doing. It was probably petty of me to enjoy their panting and especially Pak’s eventual entreaty that I slow down, but if so, I think I can live with that particular guilt. Pen, as I suspected she would, kept up just fine.
“Why are we moving so fast?” she asked me after the first hour.
“It’s more peaceful,” I explained. “They can’t sow their poison if they haven’t breath to speak.”
We camped for the night and filled our bellies with fruits and seeds. When we reach the sentinel trees on the border with Ghurana Nent, we will borrow horses and any other weapons we may need for our scouting. Some of my clansmen will be there and will join us, no doubt. Cousins I have not seen for seasons but close to my roots, and in their eyes I will see if I have grown straight and true on my own—I am only five years senior to Pen, after all. Perhaps the Black Jaguars and the Blue Moths will not be so eager to disparage the White Gossamers when they are outnumbered. Perhaps, if the Canopy is well served by my watch, the White Gossamers will climb again. I would dearly love to be the sprout of that new growth.
Even in the company of wilted men like Pak Sey ben Kor and Tip Fet ben Lot I exult in running the Leaf Road, where every step brings new smells and sounds and I can feel the filtered sun dapple my skin through tiny gaps in the leaves. The blessing of the First Tree flows through me, energy singing ballads in my blood and urging me onward in service to the Canopy. My two companions gave up on asking me to slow down, realizing it didn’t reflect well on them, and instead I waited for them to catch up periodically, wordlessly pointing out that they were not so superior after all and it was fortunate for everyone that the White Gossamer Clan protected this stretch of the western coast instead of the Black Jaguars or Blue Moths.
My clan members waited for us at a sentinel station at the base of the Godsteeth. They had not seen the Hathrim fleet pass by, nor had they received any word of timber piracy north of Pont, and my political rivals seized on this news as proof that I had misinterpreted the evidence of my eyes.
“The lights must have been sea creatures, as I said,” Pak intoned as if he were quoting wisdom straight from the roots of Forn.
“Or the ships passed by too far from this shore to be visible,” I replied. “We will ride north of the Godsteeth to be sure.” The terrain would not allow us to follow along the coast—the rocks of the Godsteeth broke up the canopy and produced large gaps in the Leaf Road—so we’d travel inland a short distance to the nearest pass between the peaks. I ignored Pak’s grumbling and insistence that this was a waste of his time and greeted my clansmen, two of whom—Yar Tup Min and Kam Set Sah—were close cousins. They weren’t benmen, but they were expert horsemen who patrolled and harvested the area’s fat spider silks and reported any trouble to the greensleeve on station.
Kam and I had grown up together but hadn’t seen each other since I set out for the First Tree and became a greensleeve. He was taller than me now, though just barely so, his hair bleached white by the sun and his skin tanned by regular exposure out of the shade. He threw his arms around me and kissed my cheek, his whiskers tickling, then he stepped back and admired the silverbark on my forearms and shins.
“You wear the forest so beautifully,” Kam said. “We are all very proud of you, Nel.”
“Thanks. But are you proud of your sister, Yar?”
“What of her? I was just about to ask about the Seeking.” He looked worried, and I smiled at him.
“She’s come back to you as Pen Yas ben Min.”
Pen had taken to some higher branches above the Leaf Road to keep it a surprise, but now she swung down on a vine and landed next to us, her silverbark plain to see. “Hello, brother,” she said.
“Pen! You’re a greensleeve!”
She chuckled. “Yes, I’m aware.”
Yar rushed forward to hug her, crying happy tears, and their reunion was one of those rare slices of perfection when you feel all your life’s trials are mere shadows thrown by the brilliant light of that moment.
Once they parted, Yar said, “I don’t have any expectation that you’ll be able to stay, but I’m very glad you had reason to visit us.” He flicked his eyes to my winded companions. Startled into remembering my manners, I introduced Pak and Tip and my clansmen welcomed them, according them honors they probably didn’t deserve, but that is the White Gossamer way, and in truth their courtesy shamed me. I should be as gracious as they were—I was, once—but that simple meeting demonstrated to me that my conduct has deteriorated since I’ve become a greensleeve. It would be easy to blame it on the low standards set by the Black Jaguars, but I don’t need a giant’s glass to see my own faults and I am not one to shrink when the sun provides me light. Henceforth I shall follow my cousins’ good example and recall that honor lies more in the giving of it than in the expectation of receiving it—even if Pak and Tip are perfect toads and know nothing of honor.
We descended from the Leaf Road to the forest floor and visited the stables, where Kam invited Pak and Tip to choose their horses. Pak chose Kam’s favorite horse—I could tell when Kam blinked—but my cousin only smiled and said we would be ready to ride in the morning.
“Kam. A word?” I said as Yar led Pak and Tip to their nests in the canopy for the evening.
“Sure.” I waited until I was sure we were alone before speaking any more.
“How many net launchers do you have here?”
“Enough for everybody.”
“Okay, that’s good. Offer them to Pak and Tip tomorrow but don’t be surprised if they refuse them. However, I’d like to make sure all the White Gossamers carry them. Bring them all. I’ll take two.”
“Of course. But why, if I may ask?”
“We haven’t had to fight giants up here in the north for a long time. Never in my lifetime, in fact.”
Kam’s eyes widened. “Are you expecting a fight?”
“No, I’m merely preparing for one. I’m thinking we might have trouble bringing them down with arrows. They are strong enough to wear very heavy armor, and even if they don’t, who’s to say a single arrow will bring them down? They’re more than twice our size. If someone sinks a shaft into us, we’ll go down, but would a giant?”
“Oh.” Kam’s mouth opened a little bit as he thought about it. “That’s right; we tend to think of fighting in the forest borders where we can call on root and stem to join in. And usually there are thornhands. But we’ll be on the other side of the Godsteeth.”
“Open land. There are trees on the slopes, of course, but nothing like a Leaf Road.”
“But you could still call on the plant life there, right?” he said, gesturing to the symbiotic evidence on my arms.
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be the same. Not as quick to obey, not as strong. And if I’m right, Kam, the Hathrim are going to be out on the plains.”
My cousin twitched. “The plains?”
I nodded. “Treeless plains. The giants are not used to trees, remember. They don’t think of them as shelter, only as fuel. As timber.” I shuddered, despising that word: a Hathrim root, of course, that implied trees were good only for building or burning. “So they wouldn’t think of hiding on the slopes. We’ll find them wading through the grass.”
“You realize that we qualify as food out there, right? And the horses, too?”
“Yes, I know. Out in the open like that we’ll be at a
disadvantage. That’s why I think the nets might help.”
“What are we trying to accomplish?”
“We’re just scouting. We find the Hathrim and report on what we see. But we have to find them, Kam.”
“Why?”
“The Black Jaguars and Blue Moths are out to discredit me and, by extension, the entire clan. Everything they say makes that clear. They want us brought lower than we already are. They don’t want us to threaten their position again.”
Kam scoffed and narrowed his eyes. “We were children when that happened.”
“So were they. But they remember.”
My cousin folded his arms. “You’re making it sound like we have more to fear from them than we do from the giants.”
“We do, Kam. The Hathrim might want to kill us, but these other clans—they want to disgrace us.”
“I think your priorities could stand some examination, Nel.”
“Our reputation outlasts our bodies. You know this to be true. My parents are gone, yet I am paying for their actions. We all are.”
“That’s not the way I see it, cuz. I mean, sure, they got treated like weeds in a vineyard, but apart from missing them every day, the arguments of the past don’t affect my life in the slightest. I have a profession and may have a family soon, and there isn’t anyone trying to take that away from me. Clan politics aren’t my concern, nor are they the concern of most people. It’s only you who have to deal with that. The curse of being blessed, I guess.”
It was my turn to scoff at him, remembering how much I enjoyed running on the Leaf Road. “I don’t feel cursed.”
“Time to start acting blessed, then?” my cousin said, his eyebrows raised so high that they nearly melted into the hair on top of his head.
“Yeah,” I admitted. He’d scolded me well, and it was what I needed. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said, and clapped me a couple of times on the back. “We’ll find the giants, and all will be well. I mean, with the other clans.” He winced. “Not sure about the giants.”
And that wry, halfhearted joke of Kam’s almost put me on the same side as Pak Sey ben Kor and Tip Fet ben Lot: I hoped we wouldn’t find the giants at all, and my reputation and the clan’s could grow mold. Because if we did find them, it wouldn’t just be the Nentian pines in danger. It would be Kam and Yar and Pen and whoever else would be joining us tomorrow.
I didn’t like the way this tree was branching, but I had no way to prune it.
“Speaking of Hearthfire Gorin Mogen, let’s catch up with him and the fate of his migration northward.”
Fintan’s transformation into Hearthfire Gorin Mogen evoked a much louder response than it had the first time; more people could see him now. But unlike previously, the giant wasn’t cloaked in an ice howler fur but rather in his customary slate gray lava dragon leathers shot through with streaks of black and maroon, tied with a dark blue belt and a steel buckle engraved with the Mogen crest. His beard, too, was different in that it appeared to be groomed and gathered at the bottom with two heavy gold ties.
We came to fresh shores on the first day of the new year—the first official day of spring in 3042. An auspicious beginning for the Hathrim in the Nentian plains. Or perhaps I should think of them as something else. “The Mogen plains” has a pleasant sound to it. Perhaps in a month I will wake up feeling arrogant and declare it.
The vast stands of timber on the northern slopes of the Godsteeth beckoned to us in the wind. Never have I seen such riches! They will fuel a new age of prosperity for our people, and our hearths will smell of woodsmoke again instead of stinking blocks of compressed weeds and vegetables.
Thinking of hearths, I called my son Jerin to me before we set foot on the beach and charged him with forming a crew to harvest the first wood for our new home. We would need not only fires but docks for our fleet, for we would be dependent on the sea for a while and rocky beaches are not gentle to glass-bottomed boats. He predictably recruited his betrothed, Olet Kanek, and her small train of followers who had come with her from Tharsif to await the wedding. Her relationship to the powerful Hearthfires of Tharsif and Narvik would provide us a political and economic boost: They would be our first trading partners, no doubt, and perhaps provide us with new settlers. And once Winthir Kanek decided we had the right to be here, all the other Hearthfires would hasten to agree.
Volund hauled his thick blond braids and some of my gems aboard a ship and continued north to Hashan Khek, where he would hire Raelech stonecutters to come down and throw up some walls and basic structures for us. I told him to lie and say the work was for a new settlement near Tharsif. If he sailed cleverly and timed it right, returning under cover of darkness, the Raelechs might not even realize they were building on Nentian soil.
Taking stock of our population as they filed off the boats was a sobering task. I had hoped to save more. The lack of warning doomed many.
But the culling might end up saving us in coming months, horrific as it is to say. I do not think we could support Harthrad’s entire population here, having no existing infrastructure on which to build. As plentiful as the game is in Ghurana Nent, it is not sufficient to support so many giants for long. The sea will provide for a while; only when we have reliable crops coming in will we be out of danger. But what potential exists in this land!
Trees on the mountains for the taking. Metal inside the mountains to be scooped out. Fertile land for us to tame and ocean waters that have rarely been fished. We will sow and we will reap a future undreamt of in the minds of Hathrim, who have so long thought themselves confined to Hathrir—who have, for too long, shied away from taking what is here to be taken.
That is, if we do not combust out of sheer stupidity.
Once we got a communal hearth going—a row of fires, really, over which we were roasting our first meal slain by Halsten’s pack of hounds—I was forced to let the new head priestess of Thurik speak to the people as soon as the sun set. Or at least there was no reason to deny her. If I’d known what she would say ahead of time, I might have simply cut out her tongue, but the old priest, lost in the explosion of Mount Thayil, had never given me cause to worry before.
She was a different creature from old Durif Donorak. Where he was staid and musty, she was a riot of color and energy. All the lavaborn draped themselves in the fireproof leathers of lava dragons out of practical necessity, but she wore a fitted corselet fashioned from their spiny tails, and at the center of it she wore a harness of blown glass chains that looped over her shoulders, under her arms, and about her waist and were clipped front and back to a brushed bronze and copper circle of Thurik’s Flame, similar to what I wore on my own armor. But the chains had been heated and treated to reflect different colors—the entire spectrum if I wasn’t mistaken—and she used this to dazzling effect. When she stepped near the fires, her shaved head gleamed in the light, and the glass chains shimmered over the lava dragon scales. Putting a finger between her brows, she sparked it, and the whale oil she had smeared over her shorn skull ignited, setting the glass chains to gleaming. That made for quite the visual; Durif had never indulged in such theatrics. She had a chain leading from her right nostril to her ear as well and additional chains around her neck. Only ten feet tall, but she dressed and carried herself to command attention.
“We gather around Thurik’s Hearth for comfort,” she said, her voice ringing like a hammer striking steel. “And a comfort it is. That’s one of the many uses for fire. It can give us a sense of safety and protect us. But we know better than all Hathrim now how destructive it can be as well. And while we mourn the loss of our homes and especially the loss of our friends and family, after every fire it is our duty to consider what comes next. Do we rebuild? Do we move on? How best to proceed? For one of Thurik’s most sacred commands to us is to use fire as a creative force more than a destructive one, to craft tools so fine that they are themselves works of art.”
There were some nods and grunts a
t this, and the priestess lifted a finger. “And while we are creating, we must not forget to build for strength as well. And we do that by burning away our impurities.”
The response to that was far louder than I expected. I realized I might have misjudged the mood of the people and shot a startled glance at Sefir, who stood next to me. She gave the barest shake of her head, reminding me that my every move was watched by more than one pair of eyes, and I quickly mastered my expression. It would be better for me to watch the expressions of others.
“We are allowed a short time here, a safe place to huddle around the hearth and think well. When the ash from Mount Thayil is cleared, we will return to build again—but build what? I urge you to consider the blessing hidden in the tragedy: we have an opportunity to show everyone, like no generation before us, that the people of the First Kenning are also first in civilization.”
Nostrils flaring, I craned my head around, seeking out Halsten and beckoned him forward. He stepped up, the silver threads in his mustaches somehow still immaculate, and I spoke in low tones for his ears only. “I need to speak to this new priestess tonight. Do you know her name?”
“I do not. But I’ll find out.”
“Good. Bring her to me soon.”
The priestess wrapped it up quickly after that with an exhortation to think on the path ahead more than the ruin behind, and the brevity and clarity of her message was so well received that my stomach soured. She would be a problem—and not an easily solved one. I had to eat and be merry after that, suffer through the farce of communal, convivial warmth when all I wanted to do was take an axe to something. The meat we shared of some nameless herbivore brought down by the houndsmen was tough and poorly seasoned and stuck between my teeth.
Sefir and I chose a place away from the main crush of the camp, a spot near the foothills of the Godsteeth where we could pitch a tent and hear about the aches of others. Sefir took care of most concerns regarding settlement and supplies; she had organized much of the provisioning herself, and she had a mind for details, hailing as she did from Haradok, where nothing but logistics allowed them to survive the frigid southern winters. She would make an excellent Hearthfire in my stead should it become necessary. I could not pretend that I would not be a target for much longer.